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Latest art and design news, comment and analysis from the Guardianen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2015Tue, 31 Mar 2015 22:05:27 GMT2015-03-31T22:05:27Zen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2015The Guardianhttp://assets.guim.co.uk/images/guardian-logo-rss.c45beb1bafa34b347ac333af2e6fe23f.pnghttp://www.theguardian.com
Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis to depart after five years in chargehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/tate-britain-director-penelope-curtis-to-depart
<p>Curtis, whose time at the helm begun in the wake of large cuts to the arts sector in 2010, leaves to take charge of the Calouste Gulbenkian museum in Lisbon</p><p>Penelope Curtis has stepped down as the director of the Tate Britain after a turbulent five-year tenure in charge of the London gallery.</p><p>Curtis, who became the first woman to run the Tate when she joined in 2010, will leave to take the top job in Lisbon’s small but prestigious Calouste Gulbenkian museum.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/tate-britain-director-penelope-curtis-to-depart">Continue reading...</a>Art and designTate BritainArtCultureUK newsTue, 31 Mar 2015 18:58:42 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/tate-britain-director-penelope-curtis-to-departHannah Ellis-Petersen2015-03-31T18:58:42ZArtist brings giant slides back to London's South Bankhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/giant-slides-london-south-bank-carsten-holler-hayward
<p>Visitors to Carsten Höller retrospective at Hayward gallery will be able to descend in 15-metre spiral slides commissioned for the exhibition</p><p>The giant spiralling slides which proved a huge hit at Tate Modern are returning to London’s South Bank.<br /></p><p>The conceptual artist Carsten H&ouml;ller installed slides – which caused several injuries – at the former power station’s Turbine Hall in 2006.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/07/hayward-gallery-uk-first-carsten-holler-retrospective">Hayward gallery to host UK's first Carsten H&ouml;ller retrospective</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/giant-slides-london-south-bank-carsten-holler-hayward">Continue reading...</a>Carsten HöllerArtExhibitionsUK newsLondonArt and designTue, 31 Mar 2015 17:38:52 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/giant-slides-london-south-bank-carsten-holler-haywardPress Association2015-03-31T17:38:52ZThe V&A’s election show is ‘the artistic equivalent of a hung parliament’http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/v-and-a-all-this-belongs-to-you-review-election-show-free-museums-hung-parliament
<p><strong>Victoria and Albert Museum, London</strong><br>All of This Belongs to You was supposed to be a timely defence of free, publicly funded museums for voters to consider. Instead, a number of weak exhibits turn its message into a shaggy dog story</p><p>The V&amp;A has done something daring and launched an exhibition about the public sphere to coincide with the general election. Unfortunately, it mirrors the election result currently forecast by opinion polls. All of This Belongs to You is the artistic equivalent of a hung parliament, confused and confusing and without a decisive message.</p><p>Only the title lives up to the title. As you enter the V&amp;A, a big illuminated sign boldly declares: “All of This Belongs to You.” It resembles an artwork by Martin Creed or Nathan Coley but was in fact knocked up by the show’s designers. It’s an apposite statement at the start of this election. For the collections of the V&amp;A and other public museums really do belong to us, and their future is in our hands. The very concept of publicly funded free museums, like the NHS, relies on a belief in large-scale state spending that seems unlikely to survive the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/19/george-osborne-cuts-30bn-eliminate-deficit-2019-welfare-squeeze">&pound;30bn worth of cuts planned by the Conservative party</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/v-and-a-all-this-belongs-to-you-review-election-show-free-museums-hung-parliament">Continue reading...</a>V&AMuseumsArts fundingSculptureArt and designCultureArtInstallationExhibitionsGeneral election 2015PoliticsTue, 31 Mar 2015 15:04:17 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/v-and-a-all-this-belongs-to-you-review-election-show-free-museums-hung-parliamentJonathan Jones2015-03-31T15:04:17ZThe life aquatic: shimmering closeups of coral – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/31/my-life-aquatic-silvie-de-burie-coral-closeups-in-pictures
<p><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/search/silvie%20de%20burie">Silvie De Burie</a> photographs the vast treasure chest that is the ocean – and her macro shots of hard corals glow and sparkle with life like the rarest of jewels</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/31/my-life-aquatic-silvie-de-burie-coral-closeups-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>Art and designPhotographyCultureCoralMarine lifeWildlifeEnvironmentTue, 31 Mar 2015 06:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/31/my-life-aquatic-silvie-de-burie-coral-closeups-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-03-31T06:00:09ZVulva artist transforms Colorado women's vaginas into body-positive arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/jamie-mccartney-vulva-casts-boulder-colorado-red-tent-revival
<p>Jamie McCartney, creator of The Great Wall of Vagina, casts American women for new work and says of the message behind his famous plaster casts: ‘You’re normal. Whatever you’ve got down there, leave it alone’</p><p>The British artist <a href="http://www.jamiemccartney.com/">Jamie McCartney</a> has set out to quell anxieties about female body image. This month, the artist cast dozens of women’s vulvas in Boulder, Colorado, to create a new sculpture. His working process was broadcast live on the internet during the week-long <a href="http://theredtentrevival.com/2015/tent/index2.php">Red Tent Revival</a>, a free online festival for women.</p><p>“Don’t change your parts, change your partner,” is McCartney’s adage. When he learned years ago that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/14/designer-vagina-surgery">labiaplasty</a>, or the surgical reduction of the labia, is one of the fastest growing surgeries in the UK and the US, he thought: “I like labia! ... This is fascism. This is the industries who are invested in making women feel shit about themselves.” </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/jamie-mccartney-vulva-casts-boulder-colorado-red-tent-revival">Continue reading...</a>Art and designArtCultureWomenColoradoMon, 30 Mar 2015 20:03:31 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/jamie-mccartney-vulva-casts-boulder-colorado-red-tent-revivalMary Katherine Tramontana2015-03-30T20:03:31ZFlying basketballers and graffiti dragons: the Sony world photography awards youth, mobile and open winnershttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/31/flying-basketballers-graffiti-dragons-sony-world-photography-awards-youth-mobile-and-open-winners
<p>Featuring a slamdunk that defies gravity and a bomb into the sea that defies the laws of nature, here are the Sony world photography award winners, announced today – with the youngest aged just 14. The open and youth winners were chosen by an expert panel, and the mobile award was decided by public vote<br></p><ul><li>See them at <a href="https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/2015-sony-world-photography-awards-exhibition">Somerset House</a>, London from 24 April to 10 May</li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/31/flying-basketballers-graffiti-dragons-sony-world-photography-awards-youth-mobile-and-open-winners">Continue reading...</a>Sony world photography awardsPhotographyArt and designCultureTue, 31 Mar 2015 07:00:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/31/flying-basketballers-graffiti-dragons-sony-world-photography-awards-youth-mobile-and-open-winnersGuardian Staff2015-03-31T07:00:01ZHow we made Jengahttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/how-we-made-jenga
<p>Inventor Leslie Scott: ‘Computer games were just taking off – and there I was trying to sell a pile of little wooden blocks’</p><p>When I was 18, my family moved to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/ghana" title="">Ghana</a>, a country rich in wood. We would often play a game with these little wooden blocks from the local sawmill. I brought a few sets with me when I moved to Oxford in my 20s and, whenever I played it with friends, they became obsessed – so much so that I’m sure I was only invited out because I used to bring my blocks. It was clear everybody loved this game, but it took me a while to realise that it didn’t actually exist as a product. So I decided to put it on the market.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/how-we-made-jenga">Continue reading...</a>DesignArt and designCultureToysMon, 30 Mar 2015 16:19:13 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/how-we-made-jengaInterview by Jenny Stevens2015-03-30T16:19:13ZTracey Emin: 'Bed shows the absolute mess and decay of my life' – videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/mar/30/tracey-emin-bed-mess-decay-tate-britain-video
After a breakdown in 1998, Emin spent four days near unconscious in her bed surrounded by the detritus of youth: vodka, cigarettes, condoms, contraceptive pills and tiny-waisted belts. As her now-notorious artwork Bed goes on public show at Tate Britain, she reflects on this time capsule of her 'complete, absolute' collapse – and the visceral reaction she wants it to spark in people<br /><br />• <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/30/tracey-emins-messy-bed-displayed-tate-britain-first-time-in-15-years">Tracey Emin's messy bed goes on display at Tate for first time in 15 years</a> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/mar/30/tracey-emin-bed-mess-decay-tate-britain-video">Continue reading...</a>Tracey EminArt and designTate ModernLondonMon, 30 Mar 2015 15:11:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/mar/30/tracey-emin-bed-mess-decay-tate-britain-videoGuardian Staff2015-03-30T15:11:00ZThe selfie museum: why big art galleries should take it seriouslyhttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/30/museum-selfie-sticks-banned-photography
<p>Selfiemania has hit new heights with a wacky dedicated museum. So why are traditional galleries enforcing selfie stick bans – when it could put them out of business?</p><p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/06/to-ban-or-not-ban-selfie-sticks-put-museum-photo-policy-in-the-crosshairs">Selfiemania in art galleries</a> has reached new heights of surreal comedy at a museum in Manila. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/artinisland">Art in Island</a> is a museum specifically designed for <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/30/selfie-sticks-banned-coachella-lollapolooza">taking selfies</a>, with “paintings” you can touch, or even step inside, and unlimited, unhindered photo opportunities. It is full of 3D reproductions of famous paintings that are designed to offer the wackiest possible selfie poses.</p><p>Meanwhile, traditional museums are adopting diverse approaches to the mania for narcissistic photography. I have recently visited museums with wildly contrasting policies on picture taking. At <a href="https://www.museodelprado.es/en">the Prado in Madrid</a>, all photography is banned. Anything goes? No, nothing goes. Guards leap on anyone wielding a camera.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/30/museum-selfie-sticks-banned-photography">Continue reading...</a>Art and designMuseumsArtCultureExhibitionsPaintingMuseum of Modern ArtNational GalleryPhotographyTechnologyMon, 30 Mar 2015 13:40:16 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/30/museum-selfie-sticks-banned-photographyJonathan Jones2015-03-30T13:40:16ZCan't stop, must fly: 24 hours at Dubai International airport – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/30/cant-stop-must-fly-24-hours-at-dubai-international-airport-in-pictures
<p>Dubai International is the world’s busiest airport – so just where is everyone going? Photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer capture some of the characters travelling through it in a single day. Interviews by Erica Buist</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/mar/30/dubai-international-airport-in-transit-kamila-shamsie">‘The most shiny structure in which I’ve ever found myself’:</a> Kamila Shamsie on Dubai’s Terminal 3</li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/30/cant-stop-must-fly-24-hours-at-dubai-international-airport-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyTravelAir transportDubaiUnited Arab EmiratesMon, 30 Mar 2015 09:30:10 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/30/cant-stop-must-fly-24-hours-at-dubai-international-airport-in-picturesMathias Braschler and Monika Fischer2015-03-30T09:30:10ZModel army: Ydessa Hendeles and her disturbing gang of puppetshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/ydessa-hendeles-from-her-wooden-sleep
<p>A wooden army has invaded Britain – and they’re dancing to Debussy’s tune. Adrian Searle is deeply unsettled by the visions of artist Ydessa Hendeles</p><p>The audience is already seated. There are rows and rows of them, entire families and groups all staring to the front. Others have taken up position around the walls, on tables and in several vitrines. They all look absorbed, or rigid with shock after some devastating announcement. Perhaps the end of the world has been declared.</p><p>Except they’re manikins, not people. There are over 150 of these articulated wooden figures – from little peg dolls to life-sized men and women – filling the theatre of London’s ICA, like a bizarre meeting of some arcane society. Lifelike but not alive, the earliest manikins date from about 1520, and there are examples from every century since. Some are toys, most are figures used by artists as stand-ins for live models. The effect is uncanny. There’s detail after detail in this <em>tableau vivant</em>, too much to fully grasp.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/ydessa-hendeles-from-her-wooden-sleep">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designCultureMon, 30 Mar 2015 07:00:08 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/ydessa-hendeles-from-her-wooden-sleepAdrian Searle2015-03-30T07:00:08ZRed skies and abandoned ostriches: the fallout from Fukushima – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/30/fallout-fukushima-pictures-japan-nuclear-tsunami-photographers
<p>With scarred skies, scratched negatives, shots of shattered railways and dead wildlife, Japanese photographers <a href="http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/in-the-wake">respond to the tragic events</a> of 11 March 2011, when an earthquake led to a tsunami and nuclear reactor leak</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/30/fallout-fukushima-pictures-japan-nuclear-tsunami-photographers">Continue reading...</a>Art and designPhotographyJapan disasterWorld newsJapanAsia PacificCultureFukushimaEnvironmentNuclear powerEnergyMon, 30 Mar 2015 06:00:10 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/30/fallout-fukushima-pictures-japan-nuclear-tsunami-photographersGuardian Staff2015-03-30T06:00:10ZSonia Delaunay: the avant-garde queen of loud, wearable arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/sonia-delaunay-avant-garde-queen-art-fashion-vibrant-tate-modern
<p><em></em>She arrived in Paris in 1910 and spent decades at the glamorous heart of the avant garde as an artist and fashion designer – but has been overshadowed by her more famous husband. Now, the first UK retrospective of her work brings Delaunay’s vibrant visions flooding into the light<br></p><p>When Sonia Terk married Robert Delaunay in 1910, she was 25. She had already changed her country twice, her name twice, and been married once, a brief marriage of convenience to Wilhelm Uhde, art critic and collector. He was homosexual; she was under social pressure from her family in Russia. Being married gave her an excuse to stay in Paris. Uhde remained a lifelong friend, but in the artist Delaunay, a pioneer of abstraction, she found a soulmate. Together, they became quite the avant-garde power couple.</p><p>Born Sarah Stern in Ukraine, Sonia had been sent at a young age to live with her uncle and aunt in St Petersburg. They were highly cultivated, well-to-do Jews, and Sonia adopted their surname. She altered her first name, too, and as Sonia Terk set off to study painting in Germany. At 21, she made her way to Paris in search of freedom, vitality and youth – which she found. A photograph from 1908 shows her seated at a table in a dark, fussy dress, all buttons and pleats (albeit with bare forearms). She is already looking middle-aged. A photo taken five years later shows Sonia posing in a loose patchwork outfit of her own creation, made in dynamic, contrasting “<em>simultan&eacute;</em>” style. She appears years younger, and ready to dance.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/sonia-delaunay-avant-garde-queen-art-fashion-vibrant-tate-modern">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCulturePaintingArtExhibitionsTate ModernFri, 27 Mar 2015 14:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/sonia-delaunay-avant-garde-queen-art-fashion-vibrant-tate-modernKathleen Jamie2015-03-27T14:00:09ZThat’s me in the picture: Hunter Gray is attacked at a civil rights protest in Jackson, Mississippi, 28 May 1963http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/hunter-gray-1963-jackson-mississippi-sit-in
<p>‘They cut my face with sharp brass knuckles; someone cut the back of my head with the jagged edge of a broken sugar container. There was a good deal of blood’</p><p>I am half Native American, half white, and a lifelong activist. I’d been a professor at the almost all-black Tougaloo College, north of Jackson, for two years when this picture was taken. Back then I was called John Salter; I later reverted to my Native American name.</p><p>In Mississippi at that time, racism and segregation were enforced by police power and vigilantes. My wife and I started mentoring students who were interested in fighting for civil rights, and in the spring of 1963 we arranged sit-ins at the Woolworth lunch counter where they had a “whites-only” policy.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/hunter-gray-1963-jackson-mississippi-sit-in">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyFri, 27 Mar 2015 16:00:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/hunter-gray-1963-jackson-mississippi-sit-inErica Buist2015-03-27T16:00:01ZStore wars: Hong Kong's extreme storage solutions – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/27/store-wars-hong-kongs-extreme-storage-solutions-in-pictures
<p>Pak choi drying on a fence, ducks dangling off a balcony and precarious potted plants hanging up high. Enter the astonishingly crammed alleyways of Hong Kong where people battle for space, as captured by photographer <a href="http://photomichaelwolf.com/#">Michael Wolf </a></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/27/store-wars-hong-kongs-extreme-storage-solutions-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designHong KongCultureFri, 27 Mar 2015 07:00:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/27/store-wars-hong-kongs-extreme-storage-solutions-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-03-27T07:00:06ZRiding the rails: Mike Brodie’s romantic Polaroids of freight-train lifehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2015/mar/26/mike-brodie-romantic-polaroid-freight-trains-us
<p>A girl covered in grazes, battered baby boots, and a handmade wooden cross with the word ‘SON’ written on it … the Polaroid Kid’s haunting images of freighthoppers walk the line between pure tenderness and true grit</p><ul><li><a href="http://theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/portraits-american-wanderers-mike-brodie-tones-of-dirt-and-bone-photographs">Born to run: portraits of American wanderers – in pictures</a></li></ul><p><a href="http://mikebrodie.net/">Mike Brodie</a> came to public attention in 2004 after he started posting pictures online under the alias <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/polaroid-kidd">the Polaroid Kid</a>. Back then, his story seemed too good to be true: a drifter with a Polaroid camera who captured the itinerant lives of the photogenic young people he met as he rode freight trains across the US.</p><p>Those early shots of kids who looked like hipster hobos were unashamedly romantic, and made all the more so by their soft Polaroid colours. Initially, Brodie shot on a Polaroid SX-70, given to him by a friend (the first picture he took was of his BMX bike). When the company stopped producing film, he switched to a Nikon F3, all the while creating homemade photobooks. “Brodie leapt into the life of picture-making as if he was the first to do it,” wrote the photographer <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/jun/18/outlaw-biker-gangs-danny-lyon-photography">Danny Lyon</a>. “He was doing what he loved, and he did it compulsively.” Brodie’s Nikon pictures were published in his book <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2013/dec/13/best-independent-photobooks-2013">A Period of Juvenile Prosperity</a>, by the art-publishing house Twin Palms.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/mar/30/mike-brodie-juvenile-train-rider-photos-interview">Mike Brodie's freight train photographs: 'It's a romantic life, at least in the spring and summer'</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2015/mar/26/mike-brodie-romantic-polaroid-freight-trains-us">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyPolaroidArt and designCultureThu, 26 Mar 2015 14:51:18 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2015/mar/26/mike-brodie-romantic-polaroid-freight-trains-usSean O'Hagan2015-03-26T14:51:18ZGoogle Street Art Project: 'We are not the mural police, we are the mural conservancy'http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/google-street-art-project-mural-conservancy
<p>How the internet giant is helping to catalog thousands of pieces of street art before they disappear forever</p><p>What some call vandalism, others call street art. Where some see criminals, others see outlaw poets, heroes of free speech taking their work directly to the people, bypassing galleries and auction houses, and democratizing the relationship between art and the public. That outlaw freedom jumped time and space last week when <a href="http://preview.gutools.co.uk/artanddesign/2014/jun/11/google-street-art-project-graffiti">the Google Street Art Project </a>announced it was doubling its worldwide database by adding 5000 new images.</p><p>Launched in June 2014, the street art database features roughly 260 virtual exhibits from 34 countries where you can browse art or hear guided tours. More than 50 organizations partnered on the project, southern California contributors being Wende Museum in Culver City, Pasadena Museum of California Art and the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/google-street-art-project-mural-conservancy">Continue reading...</a>Street artGoogleArtTechnologyArt and designCultureFri, 27 Mar 2015 15:36:38 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/google-street-art-project-mural-conservancyJordan Riefe in Los Angeles2015-03-27T15:36:38ZThe Spanish region as deserted as Siberia – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/the-spanish-region-as-deserted-as-siberia-in-pictures
<p>Spanish photographer David Ramos captures the desolation of Molina De Aragon in central eastern Spain. The region, just a two-hour drive from Madrid, competes with Siberia and the Arctic provinces of Lapland as the least populated place in Europe. Along with the Spanish provinces of Soria, Guadalajara, Teruel and Cuenca, Molina De Aragon is fast becoming Europe’s largest desert in terms of population. According to official figures, it has just 1.63 inhabitants per sq km, compared to 1.8 in Laponia and three in Siberia</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/the-spanish-region-as-deserted-as-siberia-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyCultureSpainNews photographyEuropeThu, 26 Mar 2015 16:01:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/the-spanish-region-as-deserted-as-siberia-in-picturesDavid Ramos/Getty Images2015-03-26T16:01:06ZArthur Tress’s best photograph: a boy from the Boston ghetto hides with a gunhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/26/arthur-tress-best-photograph-boy-gun-tv-set-boston
<p>‘When you take pictures of children with guns, they’re often aggressive, but this boy posed in a defensive, frightened way’</p><p>In the late 1960s, an old schoolmate of mine started doing art projects with young kids. In one, they examined their dreams and used them as the inspiration for paintings and poetry. I was invited to photograph the kids and brought along costumes and masks so they could act out their dreams.</p><p>I decided to pursue the project further and came up with a title: <a href="http://clampart.com/2004/04/dream-collector-30th-anniversary/">Dream Collector</a>. I made a list of themes from children’s dreams, and asked adult friends what they remembered from theirs. I read a lot of literature and psychology books – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/carl-jung">Carl Jung</a> wrote a whole book on the subject – then went out to stage some photographs. In 1968, I’d made a series called <a href="http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/1116144-volume-one-open-space-in-the-inner-city">Open Space in the Inner City</a>, about vacant lots, rooftops and waterfronts being turned into green spaces. It’s something everyone does now, but back then it was new. I decided to shoot in those locations: the desolate spaces had a dreamlike, surreal quality. Children would often be playing in them, so I’d use them as models.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/26/arthur-tress-best-photograph-boy-gun-tv-set-boston">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyChildrenCultureBostonArt and designArtToysSocietyLife and styleThu, 26 Mar 2015 08:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/26/arthur-tress-best-photograph-boy-gun-tv-set-bostonInterview by Karin Andreasson2015-03-26T08:00:04ZA view from the bus: double-decker visions of London life – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/a-view-from-the-bus-double-decker-visions-of-london-life-in-pictures
<p>“London has experienced the largest foreign migration in its history, which has transpired to make it the most multicultural city on earth,” says photographer <a href="http://www.georgegeorgiou.net/projects.php">George Georgiou</a>. He grew up there in the 1970s, moved abroad for a decade then returned in 2008 to find a place he barely recognised. So he decided to hop on and off double-decker buses and criss-cross the capital, capturing the view from the top deck and “the idea of London as the promised land, the last stop”</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.georgegeorgiou.net/gallery.php?ProjectID=185">The Last Stop</a> is out now <br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/a-view-from-the-bus-double-decker-visions-of-london-life-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureLondonImmigration and asylumBooksThu, 26 Mar 2015 07:00:05 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/a-view-from-the-bus-double-decker-visions-of-london-life-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-03-26T07:00:05ZIs the tiny town of Vals really the right place for the tallest building in Europe?http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/25/tallest-building-in-europe-loom-over-tiny-spa-town-of-vals
<p>Plans for a 381m high luxury hotel tower in a sleepy Alpine village have just been unveiled – and the designer is convinced it will fit right in. But is it any more than a castle in the air?</p><p>“Vals’ magic formula is very simple,” reads the promotional blurb for the <a href="http://7132.com/en/home/?main=vals&amp;overlay=9">7132 hotel</a> at Swiss architect <a href="http://www.archdaily.com/13358/the-therme-vals/">Peter Zumthor’s famous alpine spa resort</a>, which has been a site of worship for countless design pilgrims since it opened in 1996. “1000 residents, 1000 sheep and 1000 hotel beds. This magical ratio is the secret of the relaxed atmosphere in the Vals valley. Discretion is everything.”</p><p>Not any more. The owners of the hotel – property developer Remo Stoffel and local quarry entrepreneur Pius Truffer – have today <a href="http://www.dezeen.com/2015/03/25/morphosis-unveils-minimalist-skyscraper-7132-hotel-zumthor-therme-vals/">unveiled plans</a> to build the tallest building in Europe right next door, an 80-storey silo stuffed with luxury bedrooms.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/25/tallest-building-in-europe-loom-over-tiny-spa-town-of-vals">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureDesignArt and designCultureSwitzerlandSpa breaksTravelLuxury travelEuropeWorld newsWed, 25 Mar 2015 17:52:39 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/25/tallest-building-in-europe-loom-over-tiny-spa-town-of-valsOliver Wainwright2015-03-25T17:52:39ZWould I do a nude art tour? Sod thathttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/25/would-i-do-a-nude-art-tour-sod-that
<p>The artist James Turrell wants his works to be viewed in the nude. But would it add anything to the gallery experience ... other than shame?</p><p>Would you get naked in an art gallery? If so head for Canberra, where the National Gallery of Australia is offering <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-life/the-national-gallery-announces-its-first-ever-naked-tours-20150316-1m0f0b.html">naked tours of an exhibition for the first time</a>. You can join a <a href="http://nga.gov.au/Home/Default.cfm">nude tour of James Turrell’s light-filled retrospective</a> there, because the artist claims that we drink in light through our skin, so nudity adds a new dimension to his hallucinatory installations of living colour.</p><p>Whatever you say, Mr Turrell. His art is a perceptual overload. Your sense of space is changed by his rooms of light. Colour seems solid, dimensions blur. So yes, I can imagine it might be enriching to experience it nude.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/16/artist-james-turrell-retrospective-interview">Artist James Turrell: I can make the sky any colour you choose</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/25/would-i-do-a-nude-art-tour-sod-that">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCultureNaturismSculptureArtPerformance artInstallationAustralia newsCanberraWed, 25 Mar 2015 17:24:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/25/would-i-do-a-nude-art-tour-sod-thatJonathan Jones2015-03-25T17:24:09ZMagic mushroom maze: this summer's Serpentine pavilion will be a psychedelic triphttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/25/magic-mushroom-maze-2015-serpentine-pavilion-psychedelic-trip
<p>The playful plastic structure heading for the Serpentine will bring a welcome dose of mischief, and a secret stained-glass corridor, to London<br></p><p>A psychedelic labyrinth will land in Kensington Gardens this summer, courtesy of young Spanish architects <a href="http://www.selgascano.net/">Selgas Cano</a>, whose plans to weave a colourful plastic cocoon for the 15th annual Serpentine pavilion have been unveiled today. Formed from layers of jazzy plastic fabric and coloured webbing stretched over a framework of interlocking tunnels, it looks as if an exotic caterpillar might have nibbled on a magic mushroom before spinning its chrysalis. </p><p>“It will be absolutely experimental from every angle you look through it,” <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/04/serpentine-gallery-pavilion-2015-selgas-cano">Jose Selgas told me</a>, when he and his partner Lucia Cano were selected for the prestigious commission in December. In today’s announcement, the architects (<a href="http://www.archdaily.com/21049/selgas-cano-architecture-office-by-iwan-baan/">who work in their own cocoon, buried in a forest outside Madrid</a>) say they have “sought a way to allow the public to experience architecture through simple elements,” creating a “journey through the space, characterised by colour, light and irregular shapes with surprising volumes.”</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/25/magic-mushroom-maze-2015-serpentine-pavilion-psychedelic-trip">Continue reading...</a>Serpentine pavilionArt and designArchitectureDesignCultureArtWed, 25 Mar 2015 11:02:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/25/magic-mushroom-maze-2015-serpentine-pavilion-psychedelic-tripOliver Wainwright2015-03-25T11:02:29ZIn Iceland, ‘respect the elves – or else’http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/25/iceland-construction-respect-elves-or-else
<p>If you want to lay a road, build a house, or construct a dam in Iceland, there’s one influential group you have to clear it with first – elves. <strong>Oliver Wainwright </strong>on the power of the ‘hidden people’<br><br>• <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/25/iceland-elf-rocky-homes-hidden-people-svala-ragners">Rocky elf homes – in pictures</a></p><p>Huddled together amid the jagged rocks of the G&aacute;lgahraun lava field, a group of nervous onlookers wait with bated breath. Suddenly, there’s a loud crack and a tumble of stones as <a href="http://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2015/03/18/alfarnir_sattir_a_nyjum_stad/">a 50-tonne boulder is wrenched from the ground</a>, then slowly raised into the air and eased down nearby, so delicately you’d think it was a priceless sculpture. “I just hope they’re happy in their new home,” says Ragnhildur J&oacute;nsd&oacute;ttir. “The elves really don’t like being uprooted like this.”</p><p>Road-builders are used to seeing their plans scuppered by the protected habitats of bats and newts, or sites of special scientific interest and outstanding natural beauty. But in Iceland, there is another hindrance: the world of the <em>hulduf&oacute;lk</em>, as they call them, the hidden people.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/25/iceland-construction-respect-elves-or-else">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureIcelandCultureConstruction industryArt and designLife and styleWed, 25 Mar 2015 07:00:05 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/25/iceland-construction-respect-elves-or-elseOliver Wainwright in Reykjavik2015-03-25T07:00:05ZCome on, vogue: striking poses from a century of fashion photographyhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/25/masterpieces-of-fashion-photography-lumas-gallery-london
<p>From Gloria Swanson to Kate Moss, desert starkness to urban grit, a new exhibition cherrypicks the most arresting images from every era of fashion photography</p><ul><li><a href="http://uk.lumas.com/masterpieces-of-fashion-photography/">Masterpieces of Fashion Photography</a> is at the Lumas Gallery, London W1K, 25th - 29th March 2015<br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/25/masterpieces-of-fashion-photography-lumas-gallery-london">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designArtFashion photographyFashionLife and styleCultureWed, 25 Mar 2015 07:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/25/masterpieces-of-fashion-photography-lumas-gallery-londonGuardian Staff2015-03-25T07:00:04ZDesperately seeking Diego: my search for Velázquez on the streets of Sevillehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/24/diego-velazquez-unflinching-painter-seville-madrid
He started with streetsellers and rose to paint the king. But what made Diego Velázquez such a compassionate, yet unflinching painter? <strong>Jonathan Jones </strong>searches for clues in the place of his birth<p>It’s a Saturday evening in Seville and locals are flocking out of tapas bars into churches. I follow them. In front of a magnificent golden altar in one baroque church, a huge crowd is gathering for mass. I admire a float laden with candles and a statue of the Virgin Mary, ready to be pulled through the streets, past crowds of hooded penitents in the city’s famous Holy Week processions.</p><p>When I look more carefully at Mary’s painted face, I notice how lifelike it is and immediately feel closer to the artist I have come to Seville in search of: Diego Vel&aacute;zquez, the greatest painter of reality who ever lived. A major exhibition about the artist, who lived from 1599 to 1660, <a href="http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/velazquez">opens at the Grand Palais in Paris</a> today. But instead of queuing up to revere his art, I want to walk in the footsteps of Vel&aacute;zquez himself, to stand where he stood and feel what he felt.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/24/diego-velazquez-unflinching-painter-seville-madrid">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArtArt and designSpainSevilleCultureTue, 24 Mar 2015 19:17:13 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/24/diego-velazquez-unflinching-painter-seville-madridJonathan Jones2015-03-24T19:17:13ZDefining Beauty review – Greek sculpture alive and kickinghttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/23/defining-beauty-british-museum-review-greek-sculpture
Are these the greatest works of art in the world? From an attacking centaur to a broken river god, Jonathan Jones finds the Elgin Marbles are the highlight of the British Museum’s astonishing new exhibition of Greek sculpture<p>This is like entering a dream or a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/terry-gilliam" title="">Terry Gilliam</a> animation. It does not seem quite real. Some of the greatest classical sculptures in the world have been brought together in the&nbsp;opening section of the British Museum’s epic and captivating survey of Greek sculpture. It’s like looking at a collage cut from a giant encyclopedia. I&nbsp;half-expect Gilliam’s scissors to appear from&nbsp;above and snip off the discus-thrower’s head.</p><p>What a collection. A bronze youth wipes himself after a sweaty athletics tournament, his lithe powerful body recently rediscovered in the sea off Croatia. A faintly fascist German 1920 reconstruction of the lost Canon by Polykleites displays a mathematically perfect human body, while Aphrodite teasingly shows her bottom. The Discobolus of Myron strikes his eternal throwing pose. A young river god, headless and with shattered limbs, reclines – for all his injuries – in exquisite flowing grace, carved so fluently he seems a living, breathing creature.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/23/defining-beauty-british-museum-review-greek-sculpture">Continue reading...</a>SculptureArt and designArtExhibitionsCultureMon, 23 Mar 2015 18:32:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/23/defining-beauty-british-museum-review-greek-sculptureJonathan Jones2015-03-23T18:32:04ZOur friends in the north: Martin Parr's portraits of Hebden Bridge in the 1970shttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/24/martin-parr-the-non-conformists-compton-verney
<p>The Non-Conformists is a new exhibition of 75 photographs by Magnum documentary photographer Martin Parr, taken in the West Yorkshire mill town town of Hebden Bridge and the surrounding Calder Valley between 1975 and 1979. The exhibition takes its title from the Non-Conformist Methodist and Baptist chapels in the area – but also nods to the fiercely independent character of the town<br></p><ul><li><a href="http://www.comptonverney.org.uk/modules/events/event.aspx?e=370&amp;title=martin_parr_the_nonconformists">The Non-Conformists: Photography by Martin Parr</a> at The Photography Hub, Compton Verney, Warwickshire from 17 March until 4 June 2015</li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/24/martin-parr-the-non-conformists-compton-verney">Continue reading...</a>Martin ParrPhotographyArt and designCultureTue, 24 Mar 2015 07:00:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/24/martin-parr-the-non-conformists-compton-verneyGuardian Staff2015-03-24T07:00:03ZChristina Mackie's The Filters – a painting in space that fails to stain the imaginationhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/23/christina-mackie-the-filters-tate-britain-commission
<p><strong>Tate Britain, London</strong><br>For the latest in its Commission series, the Tate hosts Christina Mackie’s giant dip-dyed fabrics and curious sculptural objects – but while it’s all initially striking, it ultimately can’t connect with the scale of the space</p><p>Nine 12-metre-long tubes of coloured silk and linen fabric hang from just below the skylights in the front half of Tate Britain’s Duveen gallery, almost reaching the floor. Beneath each of them stands a shallow, circular pool of dye. Earlier, each of these tubes had sat in these pools before being hoisted aloft on pulleys. It looks as if the colour is pouring down toward the floor as much as rising from it, like the stems of lilies. Far above our heads, the fabric tubes open out with a flourish, reminding one of trumpets and funnels. The effect is a bit spoiled by a couple of tubes that are a little more complicated, the fabric hanging from what look like giant Ikea lampshades.</p><p>Some of the tubes dangle into the dye; some terminate just above the surface. Others stop before they reach it, like swimmers afraid to take the plunge. The complications give the whole thing a pleasurable sense of an arrested movement. </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/23/christina-mackie-the-filters-tate-britain-commission">Continue reading...</a>Art and designArtTate BritainPaintingSculptureCultureMon, 23 Mar 2015 14:16:17 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/23/christina-mackie-the-filters-tate-britain-commissionAdrian Searle2015-03-23T14:16:17ZTales of the unexpected: site-specific works that dream a new realityhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/23/unexpected-art
<p>In the new book <a href="http://www.abramsandchronicle.co.uk/books/art-and-design/9781452135489-unexpected-art">Unexpected Art</a>, site-specific works are plunged into the most jarring and unlikely of places – from a crescent moon that’s fallen into Auckland to candy-pink clouds cropping up in Denver’s airport</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/23/unexpected-art">Continue reading...</a>Art and designArtPhotographySculptureCultureMon, 23 Mar 2015 07:00:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/23/unexpected-artGuardian Staff2015-03-23T07:00:02ZSatire, sewers and statesmen: why James Gillray was king of the cartoonhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/satire-sewers-and-statesmen-james-gillray-king-of-cartoon
<p>Amid the imperial squabbles of 18th-century Europe, one illustrator used vicious satire and scatalogical humour to call kings, prime minister and generals to account. Martin Rowson salutes James Gillray, the father of the political cartoon</p><p>Who would you prefer to have a drink with, Hogarth or Gillray? That may sound like an insanely arcane question, but it’s one that I’ve discussed with other cartoonists on several occasions.</p><p>Ours is a small profession, with an exaggerated reverence for its past masters, mostly because we’re always stealing from them. And <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/hogarth">William Hogarth</a> and James Gillray are, without question, the greatest gods in our firmament. The 20th-century cartoonist <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/gall/0,,712437,00.html">David Low</a>, himself now firmly embedded in the pantheon, was bang on when he described them as, respectively, the grandfather and father of the political cartoon.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/satire-sewers-and-statesmen-james-gillray-king-of-cartoon">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCulturePoliticsBooksSat, 21 Mar 2015 08:00:11 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/satire-sewers-and-statesmen-james-gillray-king-of-cartoonMartin Rowson2015-03-21T08:00:11ZNaked ambition: when the Greeks first stripped offhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/naked-ambition-why-the-greeks-first-stripped-nude
<p>We are so used to nude statues their strangeness escapes us. Was this exposure of the body to do with sex, athletics, war or virtue? James Davidson visits Defining Beauty, the stunning new exhibition of the body in Greek art</p><p>The oddity of ancient sculpture often escapes us. A male nude, a Greek statue, has become very familiar over the past 2,500 years: it is what we expect of ancient statuary, that it show off its muscles. At times it can seem overly familiar, a bit tacky or tawdry or maybe just banal, evoking the withdrawing room of an aesthete of the 1890s, a gay sauna in the 1970s or the yard at the back of a modern garden centre alongside the blue-glazed planters and bird baths.</p><p>The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/sep/01/uffizi-museum-florence">Uffizi in Florence</a> was once most famous for its collection of classical sculptures, but who now spends much time looking at them as they barge past to the Botticellis? If you find the crowds around the Hieronymus Bosches too much in the Prado, seek out the cul-de-sac where they have put the wonderful San Ildefonso statue group for some peace and quiet. Even when antique statuary does not have to compete with modern painting, it can find it hard to divert attention from the artefacts of more exotic cultures. It can be impossible to move in the Egyptian sculpture rooms of the British Museum, but I have often found myself alone with the sculptures that once decorated the mausoleum of Mausolus of Halicarnassus.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/naked-ambition-why-the-greeks-first-stripped-nude">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCultureSculptureArtClassics and ancient historyFri, 20 Mar 2015 11:29:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/naked-ambition-why-the-greeks-first-stripped-nudeJames Davidson2015-03-20T11:29:01ZIcons of rhetoric: polaroids interpret North Korean propagandahttp://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2015/mar/23/north-korea-propaganda-icons-of-rhetoric-polaroids
<p>Artists Chris Barrett and Gianluca Spezza have used <a href="https://www.the-impossible-project.com/">instant photography</a> to explore the world’s relationship with the DPRK and its leaders<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2015/mar/23/north-korea-propaganda-icons-of-rhetoric-polaroids">Continue reading...</a>North KoreaWorld newsPhotographyAsia PacificArt and designCultureKim Jong-ilKim Jong-unMon, 23 Mar 2015 05:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2015/mar/23/north-korea-propaganda-icons-of-rhetoric-polaroidsChris Barrett and Gianluca Spezza2015-03-23T05:00:00ZSydney honours black diggers with Anzac memorial, but how will we remember the frontier wars?http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/sydney-honours-black-diggers-with-anzac-memorial-but-how-will-we-remember-the-frontier-wars
<p>Artist Tony Albert commemorates Indigenous Australian Anzacs, but the question remains of how colonial-era resistance leaders will be remembered</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/sydney-honours-black-diggers-with-anzac-memorial-but-how-will-we-remember-the-frontier-wars">Continue reading...</a>ArtIndigenous AustraliansArt and designCultureSculptureIndigenous peoplesNew South WalesSydneyTue, 31 Mar 2015 04:08:46 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/31/sydney-honours-black-diggers-with-anzac-memorial-but-how-will-we-remember-the-frontier-warsLarissa Behrendt2015-03-31T04:08:46ZRobert Clatworthy obituaryhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/robert-clatworthy
Sculptor who created stylised natural forms including the monumental Horseman and Eagle at Charing Cross hospital in London <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/robert-clatworthy">Continue reading...</a>SculptureArtArt and designMon, 30 Mar 2015 16:10:10 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/30/robert-clatworthyChristopher Masters2015-03-30T16:10:10ZSwiss artist Hans Erni dies aged 106http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/22/swiss-artist-hans-erni-dies-aged-106
<p>Artist whose work ranged from stamp designs for Switzerland and the UN to enormous frescoes died on Saturday, his daughter says</p><p>Swiss artist Hans Erni, whose prolific work ranged from tiny postage stamps to enormous frescoes, has died, his daughter has said. He was 106.</p><p>Erni’s daughter, artist Simone Fornara-Erni, announced on her Facebook page that he “passed away peacefully” on Saturday.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/22/swiss-artist-hans-erni-dies-aged-106">Continue reading...</a>SwitzerlandEuropeArt and designCultureArtWorld newsSun, 22 Mar 2015 15:18:55 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/22/swiss-artist-hans-erni-dies-aged-106Associated Press in Berlin2015-03-22T15:18:55ZTracey Emin's messy bed goes on display at Tate for first time in 15 yearshttp://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/30/tracey-emins-messy-bed-displayed-tate-britain-first-time-in-15-years
<p>Artist wants visitors to view her once shocking installation My Bed as ‘sweet’ moment of history and ‘a portrait of a younger woman’</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/30/tracey-emins-messy-bed-displayed-tate-britain-first-time-in-15-years">Continue reading...</a>Tracey EminUK newsArt and designTate BritainArtCultureFrancis BaconMon, 30 Mar 2015 14:41:52 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/30/tracey-emins-messy-bed-displayed-tate-britain-first-time-in-15-yearsHannah Ellis-Petersen2015-03-30T14:41:52ZHow Nazis’ stolen art sparked a battle for the Woman in Goldhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/helen-mirren-woman-in-gold-nazi-art-theft
Helen Mirren’s new film sees her playing Maria Altmann, a Jewish refugee who took on the Austrian government in the fight for a Klimt painting that was looted from her family <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/helen-mirren-woman-in-gold-nazi-art-theft">Continue reading...</a>Art theftGustav KlimtArt and designArtHelen MirrenCultureSun, 29 Mar 2015 00:05:08 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/helen-mirren-woman-in-gold-nazi-art-theftVanessa Thorpe2015-03-29T00:05:08ZItalian police seize £11m Picasso from pensioner who claims it was a gifthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/police-seize-picasso-painting-roman-statue-smugglers-italy
<p>Specialist artefacts unit tries to establish true owner of 1912 painting from artist’s Cubist period, which former frame-maker says he was given in 1978</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/police-seize-picasso-painting-roman-statue-smugglers-italy">Continue reading...</a>ArtPablo PicassoItalyArt theftEuropeWorld newsArt and designCultureFri, 27 Mar 2015 11:36:16 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/police-seize-picasso-painting-roman-statue-smugglers-italyAgence France-Presse in Rome2015-03-27T11:36:16ZPicasso, baby: Christie's sets sights on art auction record book with $140m askhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/25/picasso-les-femmes-dalger-version-o-christies-auction
<p>Auction house assesses cubist work Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’) at final price in excess of $155m for appeal to deep-pocketed global market of trophy works</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/25/picasso-les-femmes-dalger-version-o-christies-auction">Continue reading...</a>Pablo PicassoArtArt and designWorld newsNew YorkCultureUS newsWed, 25 Mar 2015 18:21:37 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/25/picasso-les-femmes-dalger-version-o-christies-auctionReuters in New York2015-03-25T18:21:37ZUnseen Anthony Caro works on show in major Yorkshire retrospectivehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/19/unseen-anthony-caro-sculpture-show-retrospective-yorkshire
<p>Four sites in Yorkshire will host the sculptor’s works, including the pieces he was making before his death in 2013, in event given added poignancy by the recent loss of his wife, the painter Sheila Girling</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/19/unseen-anthony-caro-sculpture-show-retrospective-yorkshire">Continue reading...</a>Anthony CaroArtArt and designSculptureArchitectureCultureYorkshireUK newsThu, 19 Mar 2015 21:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/19/unseen-anthony-caro-sculpture-show-retrospective-yorkshireMaev Kennedy2015-03-19T21:00:04ZOutrageous Turner nominee goes from orgasm art to designing a kids' playspacehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/19/artist-marvin-gaye-chetwynd-design-kids-soft-play-space-barking-the-idol
<p>Tired of artists being seen as ‘tricksters’, absurdist performer Marvin Gaye Chetwynd has built a fantastical soft play area – called The Idol – in an east-London leisure centre</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/19/artist-marvin-gaye-chetwynd-design-kids-soft-play-space-barking-the-idol">Continue reading...</a>ArtFamilyCultureSculptureChildrenLondonArt and designParents and parentingSocietyLife and styleUK newsThu, 19 Mar 2015 16:16:31 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/19/artist-marvin-gaye-chetwynd-design-kids-soft-play-space-barking-the-idolOliver Wainwright2015-03-19T16:16:31ZNational Gallery in London picks Prado deputy chief as new directorhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/18/national-gallery-in-london-picks-prado-deputy-chief-as-new-director
<p>Gabriele Finaldi, who presided over modernisation at the Madrid institution, takes over from Nicholas Penny in August<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/18/national-gallery-in-london-picks-prado-deputy-chief-as-new-director">Continue reading...</a>National GalleryArtArt and designHeritageCultureUK newsWed, 18 Mar 2015 09:10:43 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/18/national-gallery-in-london-picks-prado-deputy-chief-as-new-directorMark Brown Arts correspondent2015-03-18T09:10:43ZDon't be sniffy about oil-rich states, Art Dubai funds the world's most radical arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/17/art-dubai-the-worlds-most-radical-art
<p>It’s not all super-yachts and spending binges: Art Dubai, which begins this week, is opening doors for some of the most marginalised voices in art</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/17/art-dubai-the-worlds-most-radical-art">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designPaintingDubaiCultureWorld newsMiddle East and North AfricaTue, 17 Mar 2015 15:38:56 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/17/art-dubai-the-worlds-most-radical-artJonathan Jones2015-03-17T15:38:56ZGrayson Perry works attract record crowds to National Portrait Galleryhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/grayson-perry-works-attract-record-crowds-to-national-portrait-gallery
<p>Perry’s exhibition was dispersed throughout the museum, leading visitors on a treasure hunt around the 159-year-old gallery</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/grayson-perry-works-attract-record-crowds-to-national-portrait-gallery">Continue reading...</a>National Portrait GalleryArt and designUK newsCultureGrayson PerryMon, 16 Mar 2015 19:23:28 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/grayson-perry-works-attract-record-crowds-to-national-portrait-galleryMark Brown2015-03-16T19:23:28ZBrett Whiteley's style missing from paintings sold for millions, court toldhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/brett-whiteleys-style-missing-from-paintings-sold-for-millions-court-told
<p>Art conservator says Lavender Bay and Orange Lavender Bay were lacking the prominent artist’s style and design elements</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/brett-whiteleys-style-missing-from-paintings-sold-for-millions-court-told">Continue reading...</a>Brett WhiteleyArt and designAustralia newsMelbourneCultureMon, 16 Mar 2015 07:44:42 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/brett-whiteleys-style-missing-from-paintings-sold-for-millions-court-toldAustralian Associated Press2015-03-16T07:44:42ZHow Frank Lloyd Wright lives on in digital designhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/15/frank-lloyd-wright-design-sxsw-google
<p>The American architect’s pioneering design principles are influencing a new generation of digital designers are reinterpreting his work for the mobile era</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/15/frank-lloyd-wright-design-sxsw-google">Continue reading...</a>DesignMobile phonesGoogleTechnologySXSW 2015SXSWiSXSWCultureArt and designUS newsSun, 15 Mar 2015 13:23:21 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/15/frank-lloyd-wright-design-sxsw-googleJemima Kiss2015-03-15T13:23:21ZSpanish woman files court papers claiming to be Salvador Dalí's daughterhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/spanish-woman-court-salvador-dali-daughter-pilar-abel
<p>Pilar Abel, 58, says she is result of illicit romance between artist and her mother, who worked for family that spent holidays near painter’s home </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/spanish-woman-court-salvador-dali-daughter-pilar-abel">Continue reading...</a>Salvador DalíSpainEuropeArt and designWorld newsCultureFri, 13 Mar 2015 14:57:27 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/spanish-woman-court-salvador-dali-daughter-pilar-abelAshifa Kassam in Madrid2015-03-13T14:57:27ZMagna Carta exhibition is an 800-year-old lesson in people powerhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/12/magna-carta-exhibition-lessons-modern-politics-peoples-rights
<p>British Library showcase highlights value of enduringly popular document still relevant to everything from control orders to European integration</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/12/magna-carta-exhibition-lessons-modern-politics-peoples-rights">Continue reading...</a>Art and designExhibitionsBooksCultureUK bill of rightsBritish LibraryLibrariesLawUK newsPoliticsThu, 12 Mar 2015 19:06:30 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/12/magna-carta-exhibition-lessons-modern-politics-peoples-rightsJonathan Jones2015-03-12T19:06:30ZNational Gallery in London bans selfie stickshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/london-national-gallery-bans-selfie-sticks
<p>Trafalgar Square gallery joins Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim in banning gadgets, while British Museum considers similar move</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/london-national-gallery-bans-selfie-sticks">Continue reading...</a>Art and designUK newsPhotographyTechnologyWed, 11 Mar 2015 12:21:34 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/london-national-gallery-bans-selfie-sticksMatthew Weaver2015-03-11T12:21:34ZArchitect Frei Otto named Pritzker prize winner one day after his deathhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/architect-frei-otto-named-pritzker-prize-winner-one-day-after-his-death
<p>German architect who designed the tented roof of Munich’s Olympic Stadium learned of award shortly before he died at age 89</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/architect-frei-otto-named-pritzker-prize-winner-one-day-after-his-death">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureAwards and prizesCultureArt and designGermanyWorld newsEuropeWed, 11 Mar 2015 02:07:21 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/architect-frei-otto-named-pritzker-prize-winner-one-day-after-his-deathAgence France-Presse2015-03-11T02:07:21ZArtwork chronicling England's footballing failures sells for £425,000http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/artwork-chronicling-englands-footballing-failures-sells-for-425000
<p>The granite sculpture, by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, lists 124 years of the national team’s defeats and was auctioned as part of Sotherby’s Bear Witness sale</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/artwork-chronicling-englands-footballing-failures-sells-for-425000">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designCultureEnglandFootballSportUK newsWed, 11 Mar 2015 00:02:25 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/11/artwork-chronicling-englands-footballing-failures-sells-for-425000Press Association2015-03-11T00:02:25ZVan Gogh landscape to be shown for first time in 100 yearshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/van-gogh-landscape-to-be-shown-for-first-time-in-100-years
<p>Experts expect Le Moulin d’Alphonse to fetch around $10m after research tying it directly to the artist via the records of his sister-in-law Johanna<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/van-gogh-landscape-to-be-shown-for-first-time-in-100-years">Continue reading...</a>Van GoghArtPaintingArt and designCultureUK newsMon, 09 Mar 2015 11:10:37 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/van-gogh-landscape-to-be-shown-for-first-time-in-100-yearsDalya Alberge2015-03-09T11:10:37ZAmount of money that art sells for is shocking, says painter Gerhard Richterhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/06/amount-of-money-that-art-sells-for-is-shocking-says-painter-gerhard-richter
<p>‘The records keep being broken and every time my initial reaction is one of horror,’ says world-famous German artist, after sale of one of his works for £30m</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/06/amount-of-money-that-art-sells-for-is-shocking-says-painter-gerhard-richter">Continue reading...</a>The art marketArtPaintingGerhard RichterArt and designCultureEuropeWorld newsTate ModernFri, 06 Mar 2015 17:46:15 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/06/amount-of-money-that-art-sells-for-is-shocking-says-painter-gerhard-richterKate Connolly in Berlin2015-03-06T17:46:15ZMatthias Jung's surreal homes – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/matthias-jungs-surreal-homes-in-pictures
<p>German <a href="http://www.photocircle.net/us/photographers/3399/matthias-jung">graphic designer Matthias Jung</a> first constructed “surreal homes” as a boy, using scissors and glue in his father’s photo lab. In January, he <a href="http://www.zabadu.de">resurrected this childhood project </a>and created a series of dreamlike and structurally impossible collages with Photoshop. “Working with this program is a bit like overcoming reality,” he says. “If something goes wrong I just click the back button. This is what’s different now.” Taking photographs from his travels, Jung creates incongruous images that are intended to challenge perceptions of space and architecture. “Collages are like dreams,” he says, “or maybe dreams are like collages”</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/matthias-jungs-surreal-homes-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>DesignArt and designIllustrationPhotographyCultureSat, 28 Mar 2015 23:00:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/matthias-jungs-surreal-homes-in-picturesLauren Razavi2015-03-28T23:00:07ZGoing, going, gone: readers' photos on the theme of fasthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/going-going-gone-readers-photos-on-the-theme-of-fast
<p>For last week’s photography assignment in the Observer New Review we asked you to share your photos on the theme of fast via <a href="https://witness.theguardian.com/assignment/550ae5b6e4b0a55d0eb115eb"> GuardianWitness</a>. Here’s a selection of our favourites</p><ul><li><a href="http://gu.com/p/472gh/stw">Share your photos on this week’s theme ‘indulge.’</a><br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/going-going-gone-readers-photos-on-the-theme-of-fast">Continue reading...</a>PhotographySat, 28 Mar 2015 22:30:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/going-going-gone-readers-photos-on-the-theme-of-fastGuardian readers and Rachel Obordo2015-03-28T22:30:07ZThe 20 photographs of the weekhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/the-20-photographs-of-the-week
<p>The Germanwings plane crash, the liberation of Damasak from Boko Haram militants, the Cricket World Cup, the escalating conflict in Yemen – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/the-20-photographs-of-the-week">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureGermanwings flight 4U9525Boko HaramFranceTurkeyUkraineRussiaYemenGreeceAlexis TsiprasCricketCricket World Cup 2015AB de VilliersSouth Africa cricket teamNew Zealand cricket teamIndiaSomaliaIslamic StateSyriaCubaIsraelPalestinian territoriesChileAfricaAmericasEuropeEuropeMiddle East and North AfricaNigeriaSouth and Central AsiaSportWorld newsSat, 28 Mar 2015 12:40:43 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/the-20-photographs-of-the-weekJim Powell2015-03-28T12:40:43ZSkye Sherwin's A Good Lookhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/skye-sherwins-a-good-look
<p>From Sufjan Stevens’s parents to Kanye West’s contorted nudes, a month in pop-culture visuals<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/skye-sherwins-a-good-look">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCultureDesignSat, 28 Mar 2015 09:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/28/skye-sherwins-a-good-lookSkye Sherwin2015-03-28T09:00:04ZChina's biggest art collector: 13 of his golden age treasures – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/27/chinas-biggest-art-collector-in-pictures
<p>The Qianlong emperor, fourth ruler of the Qing dynasty, was also a poet and one of China’s most prolific art collectors. The <a href="http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/">National Gallery of Victoria</a> has borrowed more than 120 works from the Palace museum in Beijing to tell his story. Alongside fine 18th-century portraits by the Italian artist Giuseppe Castiglione, sit satin wedge shoes and a plate of tasty porcelain crab</p><p>• <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/a-golden-age-of-china/">A Golden Age of China: Qianlong Emperor 1736-1795</a> runs until 21 June</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/27/chinas-biggest-art-collector-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>Art and designExhibitionsMuseumsCultureAsia PacificChinaAustralia newsFri, 27 Mar 2015 02:19:23 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/27/chinas-biggest-art-collector-in-picturesNancy Groves2015-03-27T02:19:23ZCuba’s cowboy culture – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/cubas-cowboy-culture-in-pictures
<p>Crowds gather to watch cowboys, rodeo riders and mariachi bands perform during the 18th International Livestock Fair in Havana, captured by photographer Alexandre Meneghini. The fair lasts for eight days and is attended by more than 200,000 people.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/cubas-cowboy-culture-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>CubaEquestrianismWorld newsCultureThu, 26 Mar 2015 16:18:51 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/cubas-cowboy-culture-in-picturesAlexandre Meneghini/Reuters2015-03-26T16:18:51ZBorn to run: portraits of American wanderers – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/portraits-american-wanderers-mike-brodie-tones-of-dirt-and-bone-photographs
<p>When Mike Brodie was 18, he went freighthopping across the States for five years on a whim. <a href="https://twinpalms.com/books-artists/tonesofdirtandbone/">Tones of Dirt and Bone</a> captures the beauty, warmth and hardship of his life on the rails and the characters he met along the way<br></p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2015/mar/26/mike-brodie-romantic-polaroid-freight-trains-us">Riding the rails: Mike Brodie’s romantic Polaroids of freight-train life</a><br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/portraits-american-wanderers-mike-brodie-tones-of-dirt-and-bone-photographs">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCulturePolaroidThu, 26 Mar 2015 14:51:16 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/26/portraits-american-wanderers-mike-brodie-tones-of-dirt-and-bone-photographsGuardian Staff2015-03-26T14:51:16ZElven safety: the rocky homes of Iceland's 'hidden people' – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/25/iceland-elf-rocky-homes-hidden-people-svala-ragners
<p>Icelanders’ belief in elves is playing havoc with planning laws and building projects, as rocky homes for the ‘hidden people’ become protected. Here the photographer <a href="http://www.svalaragnars.com/">Svala Ragnars</a> documents the various elf homes being saved from demolition</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/25/iceland-construction-respect-elves-or-else">‘Respect the elves – or else.’ Oliver Wainwright traces their influence on construction</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/25/iceland-elf-rocky-homes-hidden-people-svala-ragners">Continue reading...</a>ArchitecturePhotographyArt and designIcelandCultureEuropeWorld newsWed, 25 Mar 2015 07:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/25/iceland-elf-rocky-homes-hidden-people-svala-ragnersGuardian Staff2015-03-25T07:00:04ZLucia Fainzilber's camouflaged 'Somewear' photographs – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/21/lucia-fainzilbers-camouflaged-somewear-photographs-in-pictures
<p>Lucia Fainzilber is normally behind the camera, but for her project Somewear she put herself in the picture. Nevertheless, she wanted her identity to be camouflaged. “These portraits can be any of us,” the photographer says. “For me it’s a way of allowing each viewer to put themselves in that place. We tend to look at faces first, and I wanted to give this work an anonymous feeling.” Fainzilber scouted out locations and clothes that would mesh into each other: “Finding these patterns has been like a game. When they fit together, your vision can be challenged.” After <a href="http://www.praxis-art.com/nosotros/">an exhibition at Praxis in New York last year</a>, the series will be on show at Art15 fair, Olympia, London, from 20 to 23 May. <em><a href="http://luciafainzilber.com">luciafainzilber.com</a></em></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/21/lucia-fainzilbers-camouflaged-somewear-photographs-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyFashionArt and designLife and styleSat, 21 Mar 2015 23:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/21/lucia-fainzilbers-camouflaged-somewear-photographs-in-picturesKathryn Bromwich2015-03-21T23:00:04ZSelf raising: readers' photos on the theme of growthhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/guardianwitness-blog/gallery/2015/mar/21/self-raising-readers-photos-on-the-theme-of-growth
<p>For last week’s photography assignment in the Observer New Review we asked you to share your photos on the theme of growth via GuardianWitness. Here’s a selection of our favourites</p><ul><li><a href="http://gu.com/p/46nkq/stw">Share your photos on this week’s theme: fast</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/guardianwitness-blog/gallery/2015/mar/21/self-raising-readers-photos-on-the-theme-of-growth">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureSat, 21 Mar 2015 22:30:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/guardianwitness-blog/gallery/2015/mar/21/self-raising-readers-photos-on-the-theme-of-growthGuardian readers and Tom Stevens2015-03-21T22:30:03ZNude art tours, elves and the biggest building in Europe – the week in arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/nude-art-tours-elves-isa-genzken-alps-week-art
<p>The man hosting nudist gallery viewings, the power of Iceland’s ‘hidden people’ and the mega mirrored middle finger to nature planned for a tiny Alpine town – all in your weekly art dispatch</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/nude-art-tours-elves-isa-genzken-alps-week-art">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArtArt and designDrawingCultureSculptureExhibitionsFri, 27 Mar 2015 12:24:54 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/27/nude-art-tours-elves-isa-genzken-alps-week-artJonathan Jones2015-03-27T12:24:54ZAfter the riots, the regeneration: Tottenham’s new stadium, franchise shops, 10,000 new homes…http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/22/tottenham-regeneration-londons-most-deprived-spurs-stadium
It sounds great, but Tottenham’s distinctive character is at risk, say objectors, as developers overlook – or even demolish – the best of what’s already there <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/22/tottenham-regeneration-londons-most-deprived-spurs-stadium">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureRegenerationArt and designTottenhamTottenham HotspurLondonUK newsBaby PSocietyUK riots 2011EnvironmentCommunitiesCultureCitiesSun, 22 Mar 2015 09:30:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/22/tottenham-regeneration-londons-most-deprived-spurs-stadiumRowan Moore2015-03-22T09:30:07ZMannequins, masters of colour, and the exhibition of the year – the week in arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/mannequins-hendeles-christina-mackie-richard-diebenkorn-gabriele-finaldi-grayson-perry-week-in-art
<p>Ydessa Hendeles’s collection of 150 mannequins turns up at the ICA, Christina Mackie drenches Tate Britain in dye, it’s all Greek to the British Museum, and Grayson Perry smashes records – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/signup/2011/jul/08/art-weekly-newsletter-sign-up">all in your weekly dispatch</a></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/mannequins-hendeles-christina-mackie-richard-diebenkorn-gabriele-finaldi-grayson-perry-week-in-art">Continue reading...</a>Art and designArtPaintingPhotographySculptureExhibitionsCultureMasters 2015Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:05:20 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/mannequins-hendeles-christina-mackie-richard-diebenkorn-gabriele-finaldi-grayson-perry-week-in-artJonathan Jones2015-03-20T16:05:20ZDark night rising: the photographer who captured the mystery of the eclipsehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2015/mar/19/kikuji-kawada-eclipse-at-night-photography
<p>As a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/19/solar-eclipse-what-you-need-to-know">rare eclipse</a> descends over Europe, we revisit the work of pioneering photographer Kikuji Kawada, who saw the turmoil of postwar Japan play out in the sun, moon and stars</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/19/kikuji-kawadas-photographs-the-last-cosmology-pictures">Meteorites and moon shadows: Kikuji Kawada’s brooding sky – in pictures</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2015/mar/19/kikuji-kawada-eclipse-at-night-photography">Continue reading...</a>CulturePhotographyArt and designDesignSolar eclipsesSpaceThu, 19 Mar 2015 17:35:23 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/photography-blog/2015/mar/19/kikuji-kawada-eclipse-at-night-photographySean O'Hagan2015-03-19T17:35:23ZLet's hope Gabriele Finaldi brings some controversy to the National Galleryhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/18/hope-gabriele-finaldi-brings-controversy-national-gallery
<p>As a tourist attraction, the NG sells itself, but as home visitor numbers dwindle its new director’s biggest challenge is to spark a debate with the British public <br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/18/hope-gabriele-finaldi-brings-controversy-national-gallery">Continue reading...</a>National GalleryArt and designCultureExhibitionsWed, 18 Mar 2015 14:56:59 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/18/hope-gabriele-finaldi-brings-controversy-national-galleryJonathan Jones2015-03-18T14:56:59ZMichael Graves obituaryhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/17/michael-graves
<p>Architect and designer of postmodern buildings such as the Portland in Oregon and of the ‘whistling bird’ kettle</p><p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/17/michael-graves-buildings-objects-pictures">Michael Graves: the architect’s best buildings and objects – in pictures</a></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/17/michael-graves">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureDesignArt and designUS newsTue, 17 Mar 2015 17:08:43 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/17/michael-gravesOliver Wainwright2015-03-17T17:08:43ZWho cares about Saddam Hussein's tomb when Isis are obliterating empires?http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/16/saddam-hussein-isis-assyrian-empire-art-museums-iraq
<p>Islamic State cowards have destroyed the Assyrian empire, but the world’s media glare is on a concrete mausoleum. Only our museums have the guts to protect our precious art history</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/16/saddam-hussein-isis-assyrian-empire-art-museums-iraq">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCultureMuseumsIraqIslamic StateMon, 16 Mar 2015 17:31:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/16/saddam-hussein-isis-assyrian-empire-art-museums-iraqJonathan Jones2015-03-16T17:31:03ZVan Gogh’s fading Sunflowers… and other tales of decaying arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/15/van-gogh-sunflowers-slightly-decayed-but-other-works-less-fortunate
<p>Supposed damage to Van Gogh’s paintings is minimal, but other masterpieces by Leonardo and Duchamp et al are showing the ravages of time</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/15/van-gogh-sunflowers-slightly-decayed-but-other-works-less-fortunate">Continue reading...</a>ArtPaintingArt and designSculptureMarcel DuchampLeonardo da VinciDamien HirstVan GoghCultureSun, 15 Mar 2015 06:59:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/15/van-gogh-sunflowers-slightly-decayed-but-other-works-less-fortunateJonathan Jones2015-03-15T06:59:04ZDavid Lynch hates graffiti, and Gerhard Richter is shocked by his own price at auction – the week in arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/david-lynch-hates-graffiti-gerhard-richter-slams-art-prices-the-week-in-art
<p>The film-maker takes a swipe at graffiti artists while Richter slams the art market. Plus, the Magna Carta goes on display, and a designer imagines animals of the future, including reflective cats – all in your <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/series/art-weekly">weekly dispatch</a></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/david-lynch-hates-graffiti-gerhard-richter-slams-art-prices-the-week-in-art">Continue reading...</a>ArtCultureArt and designStreet artPaintingPhotographyFri, 13 Mar 2015 16:01:25 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/david-lynch-hates-graffiti-gerhard-richter-slams-art-prices-the-week-in-artJonathan Jones2015-03-13T16:01:25ZRichard Diebenkorn review – colour and line under a Californian sunhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/richard-diebenkorn-review-royal-academy-sackler-wing
<p><strong>Sackler Wing, Royal Academy, London</strong><br>Richard Diebenkorn’s figures may have lacked psychological depth, but his Ocean Park paintings are still endlessly involving, where fields of colour pull you to the horizon</p><p><a href="http://diebenkorn.org/bio/bio.html">Richard Diebenkorn</a> could be subtle and nuanced, delicate and clumsy. All this gives a human scale to his retrospective in the Sackler Wing <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/richard-diebenkorn">of the Royal Academy</a>. Catherine Lampert mounted a great Diebenkorn show at the Whitechapel in 1991, two years before the American artist’s death. It is good to see him again. But neither show is definitive, and somehow the RA show feels a bit too truncated.</p><p>Diebenkorn was almost, but not quite, an abstract expressionist. He was sometimes a landscape painter, sometimes a portraitist and painter of figures, but mostly an abstractionist. Although a West Coast painter, his early, 1950s abstractions had a European feel. These were easel paintings. Sometimes there were pigs in them, or horses, or a line that was part woman’s body, part <a href="http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/dekooning/">echo of De Kooning</a>. Once or twice I was reminded of <a href="http://williamscott.org">William Scott</a>, or a sort of ill-tempered <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/art-informel">art informel</a> painter. He painted some great still lifes: a pair of scissors on a table, a knife in a glass of water, a slice of bread, the exposed sink plumbing in his studio (the latter is particularly good, though isn’t in the show here). Diebenkorn wasn’t <a href="http://www.londonfoodfilmfiesta.co.uk/Artmai~1/Chardin.htm">Chardin</a> but he could give ordinary things a kind of material solidity and presence. He was good at painting grubby corners of his studio, which flowed into the oil painters’ gunge on the paintings themselves.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/richard-diebenkorn-review-royal-academy-sackler-wing">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArt and designArtRoyal Academy of ArtsExhibitionsCultureFri, 20 Mar 2015 11:25:14 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/20/richard-diebenkorn-review-royal-academy-sackler-wingAdrian Searle2015-03-20T11:25:14ZBruce Nauman review – an electrifying carousel of ideashttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/bruce-nauman-review-revolving-education-in-art
<p>The artist’s new Paris show combines works that play on adult fears with childlike instructions and repetitive movement – a compelling lesson for young and old alike<br></p><p>The carousel goes round and the voices go round and the dancers go round and I return to Bruce Nauman once again. The <a href="http://fondation.cartier.com/#/en/home/">Cartier Foundation</a>’s Nauman exhibition in Paris is a mix of older works and new, Nauman at both his most electrifying and enigmatic and his most obtuse and apparently slight. <br tabindex="-1" /></p><p>Nauman is a compelling artist, not least because he constantly asks the question of what a creative act is, at its most irreducible. An idea might begin in nervous fiddling and footling, a distraction or a simple gesture. You get inspiration where you can.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/bruce-nauman-review-revolving-education-in-art">Continue reading...</a>Video artArtArt and designCultureInstallationMon, 16 Mar 2015 18:09:13 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/bruce-nauman-review-revolving-education-in-artAdrian Searle2015-03-16T18:09:13ZAlexander McQueen's Savage Beauty: the best-dressed haunted house you will ever visithttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/12/alexander-mcqueen-grab-attendees-v-and-a-victoria-albert
<p>A record number of advance tickets have been sold for the V&amp;A’s retrospective on the late designer’s work. It is a a brilliant and absorbing experience</p><p>Much has been said and written recently about both the salacious aspects of Alexander McQueen’s lifestyle and about the complex, densely referenced mind which conceived some of the most beautiful dresses of our times. <br /></p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/gallery/2015/mar/12/preview-night-of-savage-beauty-by-alexander-mcqueen-in-pictures">Preview night of Savage Beauty by Alexander McQueen – in pictures</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/12/alexander-mcqueen-grab-attendees-v-and-a-victoria-albert">Continue reading...</a>V&AAlexander McQueenFashionArt and designCultureLife and styleMuseumsThu, 12 Mar 2015 18:16:49 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/12/alexander-mcqueen-grab-attendees-v-and-a-victoria-albertJess Cartner-Morley2015-03-12T18:16:49ZDavid Lynch: Between Two Worlds review – clues to a bigger mysteryhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/17/david-lynch-between-two-worlds-review-goma
<p><strong>Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane<br></strong>Step through Lynch’s gallery portal, surrender to his stage-sets and cinematic sense of uncanny, and you might discover the answers you knew all along</p><p>The entry to <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/davidlynch?refer=homepageBANNERdlbrand">David Lynch: Between Two Worlds </a> at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art is through a portal. On the gallery wall is a small drawing of a violently carpeted lounge room, with an armchair and a couch, flock wallpaper and rooms that disappear beyond in forced perspective. Right next to the drawing is a full-scale rendering of the scene, a three-dimensional rendition that’s one part carnival stage set, one part silent movie dream sequence. </p><p>There’s a soundtrack, too, a low grinding of gears, a distant train whistle and an industrial ambient wash of unknown origin. The gallery visitor is invited to walk through the set and, with a bit of effort, bend and step through low doors into the back of the stage set and the beginning of the rest of the show.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2014/oct/12/david-lynch-observer-profile-twin-peaks">David Lynch: surreal purveyor of the evil that lurks within | Observer profile</a> </p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/13/david-lynch-decries-pathetic-arts-funding-cuts-and-graffiti">David Lynch decries 'pathetic' arts funding cuts – and graffiti</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/17/david-lynch-between-two-worlds-review-goma">Continue reading...</a>ExhibitionsDavid LynchArtInstallationPaintingDrawingSculpturePhotographyArt and designCultureFilmMusicBrisbaneTue, 17 Mar 2015 05:28:54 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/17/david-lynch-between-two-worlds-review-gomaAndrew Frost2015-03-17T05:28:54ZFast cars and lumber shacks: how Jason Rhoades became the all-American bad boy of arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/fast-cars-lumber-shacks-jason-rhoades-all-american-bad-boy-of-art
<p>Throbbing power tools, girly calendars, logs covered in porn and a slimy substance called PeaRoeFoam ... take an X-rated road trip through the American male psyche with the late artist Rhoades</p><p>Slung from a hoist, a partly disassembled and re-jigged V8 engine is hooked up to a power drill. There’s mess everywhere, the usual garage mechanics’ slew of discarded tools, coiled cables, abandoned lunches and girly calendars.</p><p>This plasterboard and timber shack, with a wonky basketball hoop over the door, can be taken as an artist’s studio. The things inside don’t go anywhere, but they take you places. <a href="https://www.balticmill.com/whats-on/exhibitions/detail/jason-rhoades-four-roads">Jason Rhoades, Four Roads</a>, which fills two floors of the Baltic and has travelled from the ICA in Philadelphia, is a condensed survey of the late Californian artist’s sprawling oeuvre, and the most manageable exhibition of his art that I have seen. Even so, it is a complicated and sometimes X-rated road trip. Wandering between the garage and the karaoke bar, to the sawmill and the storage racks, via a three-dimensional creation myth, it is hard not to lose one’s bearings.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/fast-cars-lumber-shacks-jason-rhoades-all-american-bad-boy-of-art">Continue reading...</a>Art and designInstallationPaul McCarthyArtCultureMon, 09 Mar 2015 16:43:48 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/fast-cars-lumber-shacks-jason-rhoades-all-american-bad-boy-of-artAdrian Searle2015-03-09T16:43:48ZInventing Impressionism review – a superb exhibition in every respecthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/08/inventing-impressionism-review-national-gallery-monet-durand-ruel-manet
<strong>National Gallery, London</strong><br />In this enthralling selection of the radical impressionist masterpieces he bought in bulk, Paul Durand-Ruel emerges as the inventor of the modern art industry<p>The man who invented impressionism was not a painter but a dealer – a silk-hatted monarchist with a taste for ormolu clocks who created a market for paintings that nobody liked. <a href="http://www.durand-ruel.fr/en/paul-durand-ruel">Paul Durand-Ruel</a> was the saviour of Manet, Monet and Pissarro. For years he was the only dealer brave enough to promote the impressionists, helping them with their doctors’ bills, their studios and even their rent; sometimes he was their only customer.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/27/the-10-best-art-patrons">The 10 best art patrons</a> </p><p>in 1872 Durand-Ruel bought everything in Manet’s studio when nobody else would buy a single canvas</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/08/inventing-impressionism-review-national-gallery-monet-durand-ruel-manet">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureNational GalleryClaude MonetÉdouard ManetEdgar DegasSun, 08 Mar 2015 07:00:12 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/08/inventing-impressionism-review-national-gallery-monet-durand-ruel-manetLaura Cumming2015-03-08T07:00:12ZFashion on the Ration: 1940s Street Style review – pluck, hope, humour and gracehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/08/fashion-on-the-ration-imperial-war-musuem-review-pluck-hope-humour-grace
<p><strong>Imperial War Museum, London</strong><br>From designer air-raid onesies to homemade mascara, necessity is the marvellous mother of invention in this small but perfectly formed look at how style survived in wartime Britain</p><p>In the last months of the second world war, the British cosmetics company Yardley ran an advertisement that read: “To work for victory is not to say goodbye to charm. For good looks and good morale are the closest of allies.”</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/gallery/2015/mar/04/fashion-on-the-ration-1940s-street-style-in-pictures">Fashion on the ration: 1940s street-style – in pictures</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/08/fashion-on-the-ration-imperial-war-musuem-review-pluck-hope-humour-grace">Continue reading...</a>ExhibitionsFashionCultureArt and designSecond world warWorld newsSun, 08 Mar 2015 07:00:18 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/08/fashion-on-the-ration-imperial-war-musuem-review-pluck-hope-humour-graceRachel Cooke2015-03-08T07:00:18ZLeon Golub: Bite your Tongue review – so terrific, the paintings roar off the wallshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/03/leon-golub-bite-your-tongue-serpentine-review-paintings-roar-chicago
<p><strong>Serpentine gallery, London<br></strong>Late Chicago-born artist has never had the retrospective he deserves in US – perhaps galleries are afraid, for his work is as shocking as it is powerful</p><p>Lions prowl, ravening dogs bark, someone fixes you with a grin. You could get stuffed in a car’s trunk and beaten senseless. Or you might end up coerced yourself. A job is a job. You could end up doing anything, given the circumstances. One day you’ll be dead anyway. <br /></p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/03/gigantomachy-ii-leon-golub-anti-vietnam-war-art-comes-to-life-animation">Watch Leon Golub's anti-Vietnam war art come to life – animation</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/03/leon-golub-bite-your-tongue-serpentine-review-paintings-roar-chicago">Continue reading...</a>PaintingChicagoLondonArtTue, 03 Mar 2015 17:52:10 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/03/leon-golub-bite-your-tongue-serpentine-review-paintings-roar-chicagoAdrian Searle2015-03-03T17:52:10ZInventing Impressionism review –seeing the familiar through new eyeshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/inventing-impressionism-review-national-gallery-monet-degas-renoir
<p><strong>National Gallery, London</strong><br>Monet, Degas, Renoir et al used nature and upper-class whimsy as a muse but this show reveals their eye for fleeting moments of drama among the everyday </p><p><br />Impressionism was a revolution that changed art forever. When Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and their fellow experimenters painted the ephemeral light on dappled woods and rainy Paris streets, they destroyed the traditional idea that art must reveal nature’s deeper truth.</p><p>Only the light in the painter’s eye – a fleeting glimpse of a passing moment – mattered for the impressionists. When Monet painted a serpentine curving line of poplar trees in 1891 he caught their greenness against a violet sky. Just to emphasise the momentary and even delusory nature of this strange effect he painted them from another viewpoint as stately sentinels reflected in water. And again, looking like totem poles.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/inventing-impressionism-review-national-gallery-monet-degas-renoir">Continue reading...</a>ArtPaintingClaude MonetPierre-Auguste RenoirEdgar DegasCultureNational GallerySun, 01 Mar 2015 15:34:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/inventing-impressionism-review-national-gallery-monet-degas-renoirJonathan Jones2015-03-01T15:34:03ZSculpture Victorious review – everything here was made to make us marvelhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/sculpture-victorious-tate-britain-review-observer-best-and-worst-patriotic-era
<p><strong>Tate Britain, London</strong><br>In room after room of busts and bling, Tate Britain’s Victorian sculpture show brings out the best and worst of a patriotic era</p><p>Of all the outlandish objects in <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/sculpture-victorious">Sculpture Victorious</a> – the majolica peacock, the emu-egg casket, the lifesize electroplated figure of Elizabeth I – the most needlessly elaborate is a salt cellar in the form of St George treading triumphantly on his dragon by the English sculptor <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/edward-onslow-ford-191">Edward Onslow Ford</a>.</p><p>To make this dapper little fighter with his shining sword and shield, Ford needed five different talents. He carved the head in ivory, metal-worked the armour, modelled the dragon in clay using a small fowl for proportions and then cast the whole thing in silver, before etching in the details. It is, at the very least, a technical feat.</p><p>An eye-searingly bright assembly of knights and damsels are apparently ascending a helter-skelter</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/sculpture-victorious-tate-britain-review-observer-best-and-worst-patriotic-era">Continue reading...</a>SculptureArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureTate BritainSun, 01 Mar 2015 07:00:11 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/sculpture-victorious-tate-britain-review-observer-best-and-worst-patriotic-eraLaura Cumming2015-03-01T07:00:11ZForensics: The Anatomy of Crime; Cornelia Parker; Cai Guo-Qiang – reviewhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/22/forensics-the-anatomy-of-a-crime-cornelia-parker-review-wellcome-collection-whitworth-manchester
Visualising a crime scene is an art as much as a science in a terrific show at the Wellcome Collection. And Manchester’s new-look Whitworth has the very best of Cornelia Parker<p>Marat, in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Marat#mediaviewer/File:Jacques-Louis_David_-_Marat_assassinated_-_Google_Art_Project_2.jpg">Jacques-Louis David’s masterpiece</a>, lies murdered in his bath. The stab wound just below his right clavicle gives the exact angle of the knife. Blood has already drained into the water but one hand still holds Charlotte Corday’s false letter of introduction, indicating how the killer got into the building. Whatever else it may be – a revolutionary portrait, a charismatic martyrdom – <em>The Death of Marat</em> is also a body of evidence. It is the ultimate crime scene painting.</p><p>As <a href="http://wellcomecollection.org/forensics"><strong>Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime</strong></a>, a terrific new show at the Wellcome Collection, reveals, art and forensic science have strange connections. It is not just that many artists have depicted crime or its aftermath, from Goya to G&eacute;ricault to Daumier and Sickert onwards, it is that painters and forensic investigators so often have a common interest – the visualisation of a scene or event.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/22/forensics-the-anatomy-of-a-crime-cornelia-parker-review-wellcome-collection-whitworth-manchester">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureCornelia ParkerSun, 22 Feb 2015 08:00:21 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/22/forensics-the-anatomy-of-a-crime-cornelia-parker-review-wellcome-collection-whitworth-manchesterLaura Cumming2015-02-22T08:00:21ZBlack, British and proud: 50 years of struggle and triumphhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/16/black-british-struggle-triumph-v-and-a-staying-power
<p>From Miss Black &amp; Beautiful pageants to the British Black Panthers, the V&amp;A’s thought-provoking new photography exhibition is long overdue</p><p>The first picture you see as you enter <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/s/staying-power/">Staying Power</a>: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s is Self-portrait in Mirror by Armet Francis. It shows him standing in a small, cluttered room staring down into a camera that’s mounted on a lens. In the background, a young woman gazes up at him in either deep concentration or admiration.</p><p><a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/__data/assets/image/0018/252063/E.103-2013_P.jpg">This portrait within a portrait</a> is interesting in all kinds of ways. Francis is black, and the young woman is white. The photograph was taken in 1964, when interracial relationships were still shocking to some. Francis was just 19 when he made it, working as an assistant in a photographic studio in London’s West End. It is a photograph, then, that betokens a degree of self-confidence and belonging, both personal and professional.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/16/black-british-struggle-triumph-v-and-a-staying-power">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designRace issuesV&ACultureExhibitionsMon, 16 Feb 2015 16:43:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/16/black-british-struggle-triumph-v-and-a-staying-powerSean O'Hagan2015-02-16T16:43:01ZA battle of iron wills: the fractious world of architects v clientshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/17/soane-museum-battle-of-iron-wills-fractious-world-of-architects-clients
<p>Architects have always used alluring (or deceiving) drawings to get their way with ‘meddling amateurs’ – as a new exhibition at the Soane Museum proves<br></p><p>It must have been one of the most spectacular interiors of its time. The walls were lined with oak panelling, doorways were flanked by grand pairs of yellow marble-effect columns topped with scrolled pediments, while the double-height space soared up to a daring starfish vaulted ceiling, made to appear floating by cleverly recessed skylights. But no sooner had John Soane finished the exquisite decoration of the new <a href="http://www.soane.org/news/article/the-board-of-trade-and-privy-council-offices-lost-interiors">Privy Council Chamber</a> in Whitehall, than he was instructed to rip it all out.</p><p>Clerk of the Privy Council, the forthright diarist <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/may/28/featuresreviews.guardianreview3">Charles Greville</a>, complained that Soane’s big columns took up valuable floor space, while his showy ceiling provided bad acoustics. He detailed his objections in a letter of 1827 calling the architect to prepare an estimate for “undecoration works”. A furious Soane responded with a series of before-and-after drawings showing what the result of Greville’s intervention would be: a bleak, prison-like shoebox of a room, a deep well bereft of regal decorum. The architect was granted a reprieve.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/17/soane-museum-battle-of-iron-wills-fractious-world-of-architects-clients">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureDesignArt and designCultureSir John Soane's MuseumMuseumsExhibitionsHeritageTue, 17 Feb 2015 12:13:10 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/17/soane-museum-battle-of-iron-wills-fractious-world-of-architects-clientsOliver Wainwright2015-02-17T12:13:10ZHistory is Now: 7 Artists Take on Britain review – the ultimate Blue Peter time capsulehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/15/history-is-now-7-artists-take-on-britain-hayward-review
<strong>Hayward Gallery, London</strong><br />From flak jackets to flotsam to Farrow &amp; Ball, seven artists curate an inspired cultural history of postwar Britain<p>In 1981, using an Arts Council camera and 16mm film, Gilbert &amp; George explored their idea of Britain. The <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/gilbert-and-george-world-gilbert-george" title="">hour-long home movie</a> is one of many highlights of this inspired Hayward show. The film cuts between footage of their double act as living sculptures, deciding whether to “buy another vase”, to footage of flapping union jacks and marching soldiers (in the year before the Falklands war), to interviews with young East End men who stare fixedly at the camera and try to respond to the directive to “describe their lives so far”. Most of the interviewees don’t get much beyond “It’s been all right”. One, with a bit of a Paul Weller haircut, thinks for a while before reflecting: “Really, it’s been a total disaster. I’ve got in a lot of bother. Some of it has been a laugh though. And things have got better lately… It’s only recently I’ve been to Southend.”</p><p>That sentiment might make a succinct summary of the tone of <a href="http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/history-is-now-7-artists-take-88866" title="">History Is Now</a> – seven artists’ discrete impressions of the nation in the three score years and 10 since the end of the second world war. In some ways the show is the ultimate <em>Blue Peter </em>time capsule, an attempt to curate the representative traces – from camouflage flak jackets to Farrow &amp; Ball paint charts – that have formed and shaped us, got us where we are today. The artists – film-maker <a href="http://www.carrollfletcher.com/artists/40-John-Akomfrah/overview/" title="">John Akomfrah</a> (who selected the Gilbert &amp; George movie among others), conceptualists <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/08/rising-star-simon-fujiwara" title="">Simon Fujiwara</a> and Roger Hiorns, photographer <a href="http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/hannah_starkey.htm" title="">Hannah Starkey</a>, sculptor <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jun/11/richard-wentworth-sculptor-portrait-artist" title="">Richard Wentworth</a> and sister act Jane and Louise Wilson – start from very different places. Still, the more you look, a kind of settled consensus about the themes of the past 70 years – of struggle and conflict, of the end of industry and the invention of consumerism – emerges. “We’ve got in a lot of bother… Some of it has been a laugh though.” That just about does it.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/15/history-is-now-7-artists-take-on-britain-hayward-review">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designCultureSocial historySocietyGilbert & GeorgeRoger HiornsDamien HirstSun, 15 Feb 2015 07:00:14 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/15/history-is-now-7-artists-take-on-britain-hayward-reviewTim Adams2015-02-15T07:00:14ZMackmania! Charles Rennie Mackintosh's genius shines in his first architecture retrospectivehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/charles-rennie-mackintoshs-genius-shines-in-his-first-ever-retrospective
<p>He’s been stereotyped as difficult and uncompromising, but there’s no denying Mackintosh’s raw talent in this definitive look at his architectural drawings</p><p>It’s an unusual affliction, but some architects’ reputations have suffered from simply being too popular. Charles Rennie Mackintosh is a name now likely to make you nauseous with visions of swirling stained-glass roses and geometric black grids, slatted high-back chairs and fussy fireplace surrounds. His <a href="http://www.justmackintosh.com/">trademark motifs</a> are plastered on everything from bags and bookmarks to tapestries and tea towels, the chintzy staples of many a Past Times catalogue. If Mackintosh had received a cut from the slew of merchandise sold under his name, he would have died a wealthy man – rather than in poverty-stricken obscurity in self-imposed exile in the south of France.</p><p>So the news that the <a href="http://www.architecture.com/WhatsOn/Feb2015/MackintoshArchitecture.aspx">Royal Institute of British Architects is putting on a definitive Mackintosh exhibition</a> might well make you want to run for the hills and hide from the resurgent tide of Mackmania, stoked once again since the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/23/firefighters-blaze-glasgow-school-of-art">tragic fire that destroyed his seminal library at the Glasgow School of Art last year</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/charles-rennie-mackintoshs-genius-shines-in-his-first-ever-retrospective">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureCultureWed, 11 Feb 2015 11:34:27 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/charles-rennie-mackintoshs-genius-shines-in-his-first-ever-retrospectiveOliver Wainwright2015-02-11T11:34:27ZJohn Singer Sargent at the National Portrait Gallery review – scintillatinghttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/10/john-singer-sargent-national-portrait-gallery-review
<p>Easily mistaken for a conservative throwback, Sargent’s portraits in fact are daring, haunting and astonishing</p><p>In 1906 the celebrated society portraitist John Singer Sargent painted his own august image in starched white collar and silver tie for the venerable collection of self-portraits in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. That same year in Montmartre, Pablo Picasso finished a portrait of Gertrude Stein by giving her a stone mask for a face. Picasso’s attack on the idea of the painted likeness soon led to faces becoming constellations of cubist shards or abstract ovals. The Mona Lisa got a moustache. In the lifetime of Sargent – who made it to 1925 – this avant garde assault left the traditional portrait, at which he so excelled, looking lost and archaic.<br /></p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/30/how-john-singer-sargent-made-a-scene">How John Singer Sargent made a scene</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/10/john-singer-sargent-national-portrait-gallery-review">Continue reading...</a>PaintingNational Portrait GalleryExhibitionsArtCultureArt and designTue, 10 Feb 2015 15:45:57 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/10/john-singer-sargent-national-portrait-gallery-reviewJonathan Jones2015-02-10T15:45:57ZMarlene Dumas: The Image As Burden review – painterly and provocativehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/08/marlene-dumas-image-as-burden-tate-modern-review-painterly-provocative
<p><strong>Tate Modern, London</strong><br>Marlene Dumas’s sumptuous portraits from photographs – of unknown subjects and famous faces – prove questioning and, en masse, elusive in Tate Modern’s major retrospective</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/11/bold-graphic-disturbing-the-art-of-marlene-dumas-in-pictures">Marlene Dumas at Tate Modern – in pictures</a><br></li></ul><p>There is a painting in this show of the man who murdered the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, shooting him repeatedly before <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/dec/05/features.magazine77">slashing his throat</a>. It is delicate and pale, materialising in beautiful veils. There is another of Osama bin Laden in the glowing stained-glass hues of a <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/georges-rouault-1876">Rouault</a>. Should they be quite so gorgeous, these canvases? Should these men get such lavish treatment? Who should appear in a painting?</p><p>The art of <a href="http://www.marlenedumas.nl/">Marlene Dumas</a>, born in South Africa in 1953, is painterly and provocative in about equal measure. You notice the method – fluent, sumptuous, the paint sinking into the canvas in translucent stains, the brush carrying its licks and swipes with gliding expertise – at exactly the same moment as the subject, which is always human, often vulnerable, violent, suffering or dead. That’s the first disjuncture, a sort of double take that forces the viewer to think twice about why the subject has been painted in this way. The second question is more primitive: simply, who’s in this painting and why?</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/11/the-daring-art-of-marlene-dumas-duct-tape-pot-bellies-and-bin-laden">The daring art of Marlene Dumas: duct-tape, pot bellies and Bin Laden</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/08/marlene-dumas-image-as-burden-tate-modern-review-painterly-provocative">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureSun, 08 Feb 2015 07:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/08/marlene-dumas-image-as-burden-tate-modern-review-painterly-provocativeLaura Cumming2015-02-08T07:00:09ZBonaparte and the British review – a bizarre delve into patriotism from another agehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/06/bonaparte-and-the-british-review-british-museum
<p><strong>British Museum, London</strong><br>This hoard of cheap and often cruel satirical prints of the Napoleonic wars is hard work, but it’s worth the effort<br></p><p>In one of the many classic moments in his <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/jul/01/civilisation-not-world-cup-why-we-need-bbc">BBC TV series Civilisation</a>, critic Kenneth Clark stands before Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican and relates how painter Sir Joshua Reynolds used to warn his pupils that they might find these masterpieces a bit boring on first view. You must keep on looking until you do appreciate them, admonished Reynolds.</p><p>“Well, I’ve been trying to do that all my life,” says Clark, “and let me tell you, it <em>has</em> been worth it.”</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/06/bonaparte-and-the-british-review-british-museum">Continue reading...</a>IllustrationExhibitionsArt and designMuseumsCultureFri, 06 Feb 2015 16:45:59 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/06/bonaparte-and-the-british-review-british-museumJonathan Jones2015-02-06T16:45:59ZWhitworth Art Gallery redesign – a breath of fresh airhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/whitworth-gallery-manchester-muma-redesign
This clever but subtle redesign for Manchester’s Whitworth tears up the red tape and lets the light, and surrounding park, flood in<p>We need to talk about BS5454. This may not be a subject to quicken your pulse on a Sunday morning, nor indeed one on which you have strong views one way or another. Some may not even know what it is. But it is a document of importance to the cultural life of the nation. It is one that the <a href="http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk">Whitworth</a> in Manchester has dared to challenge. For those few readers who are still with me, rather than defecting to the sports pages, it is the British Standard that concerns the “storage and exhibition of archival documents” and is part of the edifice of rules that, in the admirable desire to preserve beautiful and historic artefacts, requires art galleries to become sealed air-control machines at great cost in money and energy. Museums won’t lend to each other, nationally or internationally, unless such equipment is in place. According to <a href="http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/about/staff/drmariabalshaw/">Maria Balshaw</a>, director of the Whitworth, it means museums in poorer countries can’t afford to take part in the global interchange of exhibits.</p><p>The Whitworth has said pshaw! to BS5454. It has torn it to shreds and thrown the pieces in the air. With the engineers Buro Happold it has worked out a way of controlling the temperature and humidity without such things as artificial refrigeration. It has done so in consultation with other institutions, including Tate, to make sure it will still be able to borrow. This approach is now being adopted by other museums and is one of the most significant achievements of the Whitworth’s &pound;15m remodelling, but it is one you won’t be able to see.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/whitworth-gallery-manchester-muma-redesign">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureDesignManchesterCitiesArt and designCultureSun, 01 Feb 2015 09:00:14 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/whitworth-gallery-manchester-muma-redesignRowan Moore2015-02-01T09:00:14ZChristian Marclay: review – the most exciting contemporary art show in townhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/christian-marclay-liquids-review-most-exciting-contemporary-art-show-in-town
<p><strong>White Cube Bermondsey, London</strong><br>The visual and cognitive effects of Christian ‘The Clock’ Marclay’s witty onomatopoeia show are compulsively physical</p><p>The most exciting contemporary art show in town at the moment has to be <a href="http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_bermondsey_2015/">Christian Marclay</a>’s wonderful onomatopoeia at White Cube Bermondsey. It turns that enormous industrial warehouse into something like a metropolis, with a bustling main street that leads to an arthouse cinema, a gallery full of pictures and a concert hall where musicians will gather every weekend to conjure experimental sounds out of (among other things) a thousand glasses shelved around the space at the height of a convivial pub bar, each improvisation recorded and pressed in a portable vinyl factory for visitors to take home, to round off the pleasure. Marclay is expanding the very definition of what a show can be.</p><p>Images and sounds, and how they go together, turn out to be his theme. The show opens with a street of sounds – or, more properly, the sounds of the street – in the form of 11 video projections made on dawn walks through London’s East End on weekends, where yesterday’s empties huddle on the ground by bus stops, stand abandoned on windowsills or scatter in shards across the pavement. The artist, his hand-held camera loping along, coaxes a fragile soundtrack out of these glass vessels with a silver pen as he goes, so that the central avenue of the White Cube rings with strange music.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/christian-marclay-liquids-review-most-exciting-contemporary-art-show-in-town">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designExhibitionsCulturePaintingAnimationFilmSun, 01 Feb 2015 07:00:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/christian-marclay-liquids-review-most-exciting-contemporary-art-show-in-townLaura Cumming2015-02-01T07:00:06ZMe me meme: artists’ selfies paint the full spectrum of self-obsessionhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/23/self-turner-contemporary-margate-review-artists-selfies-painting
<p><strong>Turner Contemporary, Margate</strong><br>From a Van Dyck self-portrait to Ian Breakwell’s heartbreaking valediction as he lay dying of cancer, this absorbing show sorts the vain from the glorious</p><p>There’s a body on the floor of the gallery, as if he’d been dragged up from an east Kent beach. Good lord, it’s <a href="http://www.jeremymillar.org">Jeremy Millar</a>. The exposed parts of his body are covered in weird holes. Something’s had a go at him. This ultra-realistic cast of the artist’s body in extremis is based on a story by chiller-writer <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/oct/27/featuresreviews.guardianreview32">Algernon Blackwood</a>, and a hoax photograph by <a href="http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/portrait_of_the_photographer_as_a_drowned_man">Hyppolyte Bayard</a>, a 19th-century pioneer of photography who faked his own suicide.</p><p>Millar’s surprising work comes with a lot of baggage. What self-portrait doesn’t? Some artists want to disguise themselves. Gillian Wearing got herself up as her own mother for a photograph, and Jo Spence wears a grotesque, grinning mask. Marjorie Watson Williams ran away to Paris in 1926, changed her name to <a href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw07995/Paule-Vzelay">Paule V&eacute;selay</a> and went abstract. Louise Bourgeois drew and sculpted herself as a five-legged cat. You wouldn’t trust it as a pet. Nor would you want <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/Isaac-Fuller">Isaac Fuller</a> to eyeball you in a bar. His 1670 portrait has him as a magnificent monster, a pub-bore giving it large.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/23/self-turner-contemporary-margate-review-artists-selfies-painting">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designPaintingCultureExhibitionsInstallationDrawingSculptureGilbert & GeorgeTracey EminVan DyckDamien HirstYinka ShonibareFri, 23 Jan 2015 17:25:53 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/23/self-turner-contemporary-margate-review-artists-selfies-paintingAdrian Searle2015-01-23T17:25:53ZWhen heaven was a drive-thru hamburgerhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/25/norms-when-heaven-was-a-drive-in-hamburger-googie-architecture-spiegelhalters
Two beautiful urban oddities – one in sunny LA and the other in east London – have survived to tell a unique story of the human spirit. Now they both face the wrecking ball<p>When I first found Norms, a diner on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, I didn’t know it might be a historic monument. I was looking for a place to eat, and found something appealing in the five-times stacked sharp-angled kites of its vertical sign, and their echoes in the repeating over-sized shapes of its roof structure. I liked the fearless optimism and joyful redundancy of the design, the plays of clunk and refinement, vegetation and industrial product, of orange letters against the complementary blue of the California sky. On the inside the glass walls give the contact with the exterior that you might get in a classic modernist house in the lush hills of Pacific Palisades, the bright sunlight modified by deep eaves.</p><p>I also have a weak spot for the deep predictability of the menus in American diners, their unwavering breakfasts and hamburger options, and the liberation that they offer from thought. Los Angeles is one of the greatest cities in the world for architecture of the 20th century, from its first decade to its last, which means I go there from time to time. So, when I do, I revisit Norms.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/25/norms-when-heaven-was-a-drive-in-hamburger-googie-architecture-spiegelhalters">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureDesignArt and designCultureLos AngelesUS newsCaliforniaUnited StatesTravelSun, 25 Jan 2015 08:00:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/25/norms-when-heaven-was-a-drive-in-hamburger-googie-architecture-spiegelhaltersRowan Moore2015-01-25T08:00:29ZRubens and His Legacy review – ambiguities lost in a thicket of pasticheshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/25/rubens-and-his-legacy-review-rubens-still-seems-occluded
<p><strong>Royal Academy, London</strong><br>The Royal Academy’s huge Rubens show somehow leaves the great, puzzling Flemish painter in the shadows</p><p>How is it possible to have such mixed feelings about Rubens? An artist of stupendous energy and force who ran a massive studio, spoke six languages with ease, combined a meteoric career in diplomacy with prodigious fame as the most successful and prolific artist of 17th-century Europe, whose letters gleam with verve and insight, whose drawings are pure potency, whose love of life produced two exceptionally happy marriages and many children, one born eight months after his death. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) ought to be the very model of an artist, sane, secure and completely fulfilled, quite apart from being the painter’s painter par excellence.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/25/rubens-and-his-legacy-review-rubens-still-seems-occluded">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureRoyal Academy of ArtsSun, 25 Jan 2015 08:00:18 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/25/rubens-and-his-legacy-review-rubens-still-seems-occludedLaura Cumming2015-01-25T08:00:18ZCities within cities: the graffiti artists who are shaking up mapshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/mapping-the-city-somerset-house-street-art-graffiti-cartography
<p>Street artists are showing how they’d map cities differently in a new show that lets visitors step into their clandestine worlds. Conventional cartography this is not ...</p><p>Swags of skin hang from the walls of the New Wing of Somerset House, like the flayed flesh of some strange sea creatures, stretched out to dry. It’s an alarming sight in this abandoned suite of rooms, which have been off-limits since they were recently vacated by the Inland Revenue. Was this the gruesome fate of those who didn’t pay their taxes on time?</p><p>The drooping rags turn out to be latex, peeled from the sinuous cast-iron shields of <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/D%C3%A9tail_de_la_station_de_m%C3%A9tro_du_Palais-Royal_%28Hector_Guimard%29_%282568008425%29.jpg">Hector Guimard’s spectacular art nouveau entrances to the Paris Metro</a>. They hang beside a slumped rubbery sack on a plinth – another latex cast, this time a stone cat from the cemetery of Montmartre. Both are the work of <a href="http://www.kensortais.com/">Ken Sortais</a>, a professional golfer turned street artist, now member of <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pal-crew">Paris’s revered PAL graffiti crew</a>, whose cursive letterforms, thrown up on walls all over the city, have reached new levels of baroque extravagance. These latex ghosts form a typically gnomic contribution to <a href="http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/mapping-the-city">Mapping the City</a>, an exhibition of the responses by 50 international street artists to being asked to map their cities “through subjective surveying rather than objective ordinance”. Conventional cartography this is not.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/mapping-the-city-somerset-house-street-art-graffiti-cartography">Continue reading...</a>Street artArtArt and designExhibitionsMapsTravelCitiesCultureWed, 21 Jan 2015 14:47:35 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/mapping-the-city-somerset-house-street-art-graffiti-cartographyOliver Wainwright2015-01-21T14:47:35ZThe Clash’s Paul Simonon: this gauche biker art is a betrayal of punkhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/the-clash-paul-simonon-gauche-biker-art-betrayal-punk
<strong>ICA, London</strong><br>Hamfisted painting and artistic incompetence define Simonon’s solo exhibition. His time would be better spent embracing punk’s ethos and promoting real outsider artists<p>Punk was the golden age of the British amateur. You didn’t need to be able to play an instrument. You didn’t need anything except anger, energy and guts. Even youth was dispensable – Ian Dury was in his 30s when he recorded Sex &amp; Drugs &amp; Rock &amp; Roll.</p><p>The Clash (who actually could play their instruments) paid homage to that punk spirit of artistic anarchy in their 1981 song <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/clash/hitsvilleuk.html" title="">Hitsville UK</a>: “Now the boys and girls are not alone/ Now that hitsville’s hit UK.”</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/the-clash-paul-simonon-gauche-biker-art-betrayal-punk">Continue reading...</a>Art and designICAPaintingCulturePunkMusicWed, 21 Jan 2015 16:04:35 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/the-clash-paul-simonon-gauche-biker-art-betrayal-punkJonathan Jones2015-01-21T16:04:35ZRubens and His Legacy: crass analogies, bad ideas – and barely any Rubenshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/20/rubens-and-his-legacy-review-crass-analogies-bad-ideas
<p>Rubens was so great he managed to invent nudes, portraits, rainbows and even Jesus Christ – or so the Royal Academy would have us believe in its sloppy and simplistic new exhibition, Rubens and His Legacy</p><p>The irritation started when I entered the first room of the Royal Academy’s much-touted epic exhibition <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/rubens-and-his-legacy">Rubens and His Legacy</a> and my eyes fell on a painting by John Constable. It is hard to think of a painter who has less in common with Rubens. But the curators have spotted one connection I never guessed: they both painted rainbows. Perhaps this room should also include paintings with rainbows in them by Kandinsky, <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/The_Rainbow_oil_on_canvas_painting_by_Robert_Delaunay,_1913.JPG">Robert Delaunay</a> and the Chapman brothers. Why not? That is the RA’s less than precise approach to art history.</p><p>So Rubens invented the rainbow, apparently. He also invented the grand portrait, the nude and Jesus Christ – or so you might believe if you took Rubens and His Legacy seriously. To be fair, Constable’s intensely churned landscape painting <a href="http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/showlarge.aspx?id=120">Cottage at East Bergholt</a> (c 1833) does indeed emulate the composition of Rubens’ Landscape with Rainbow (mid-1630s) hanging nearby. The trouble is, such isolated facts are given hugely exaggerated significance in this sloppy exhibition. Rubens and His Legacy tries to distort the rich and complex story of art to fit a simplistic big idea. Constable, Turner and Gainsborough – all of whose landscapes are juxtaposed with those of Rubens here – were fascinated by the great European masters: their biggest “influence” was the 17th-century <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/claude">French landscape artist Claude</a>. So why try to claim that Rubens was somehow their one true source?</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/20/rubens-and-his-legacy-review-crass-analogies-bad-ideas">Continue reading...</a>ArtRoyal Academy of ArtsPaintingCultureArt and designTue, 20 Jan 2015 18:50:43 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/20/rubens-and-his-legacy-review-crass-analogies-bad-ideasJonathan Jones2015-01-20T18:50:43ZAdventures of the Black Square review – art that aimed to change the worldhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/18/adventures-of-the-black-square-review-whitechapel-abstract-art-that-aimed-to-change-the-world
<p><strong>Whitechapel Gallery, London</strong><br>This huge survey of abstract art from Malevich onwards is big on revolutionary ways of thinking rather than ways of seeing</p><p>Malevich’s <em>Black Quadrilateral</em> hangs on the wall, surprisingly fragile and small. It is starting to look its age. The black shape has faded to grey, but still tilts sharp and subversive against the correct white rectangle on which it floats, fine cracks spreading like laughter lines across the surface. It feels like the most gleeful send-up of figurative painting.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/18/adventures-of-the-black-square-review-whitechapel-abstract-art-that-aimed-to-change-the-world">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureWhitechapel GallerySun, 18 Jan 2015 08:00:22 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/18/adventures-of-the-black-square-review-whitechapel-abstract-art-that-aimed-to-change-the-worldLaura Cumming2015-01-18T08:00:22ZRenato Guttuso review – the communist painter who loved Marilyn Monroehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/12/renato-guttuso-estorick-collection-review-communist-marilyn-monroe
<p><a href="http://www.estorickcollection.com/exhibitions/forthcoming_exhibition.php"><strong>Estorick Collection</strong></a><strong>, London<br></strong>This surprising Sicilian painter and staunch communist showed the joys of real Italian life – by inserting Monroe and Picasso into its streets</p><p>Socialist realism is not exactly the most fashionable of art movements. The early avant garde art of the Soviet Union is widely celebrated; <a href="http://uploads4.wikiart.org/images/el-lissitzky/beat-the-whites-with-the-red-wedge-1920.jpg">El Lissitzky’s red wedge </a> is agreed to be cool. But when Stalin came to power and proclaimed the doctrine of realism, communist art stepped back and never recovered its vitality.</p><p>There’s a lot of willed historical ignorance in this mantra for slaughter that was already part of Soviet life when the <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSwar.htm">Suprematists were painting their utopian dreams</a>. Abstract propaganda was propaganda nonetheless. But what can be said in artistic defence of the realist hacks who were promoted by communism from the 1930s to the 1980s?</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/12/renato-guttuso-estorick-collection-review-communist-marilyn-monroe">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureMon, 12 Jan 2015 15:28:18 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/12/renato-guttuso-estorick-collection-review-communist-marilyn-monroeJonathan Jones2015-01-12T15:28:18ZDrawn By Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection review – a stupendous selectionhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/11/drawn-by-light-review-royal-photographic-society-collection-science-museum-stupendous-selection
<p><strong>Science Museum, London </strong><br>Images talk to each other over time in this remarkable survey of more than 200 photographs, from ghostly heliographs to megapixel prints, collected by the Royal Photographic Society</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/series/the-pictures-that-changed-photography">The pictures that changed photography: our pick of the Royal Photographic Society collection</a></li></ul><p>There is an image at the start of <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/drawn_by_light.aspx">this magnificent exhibition</a> that gets straight to the heart of photography. It shows the ghostly figure of a woman holding an early camera in a scene so fugitive and diaphanous it might be about to vanish. But everything is held back from the brink, including the phenomenon the woman herself is trying to capture, which is the very definition of transience: a bubble floating in mid air.</p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Brigman">Anne Brigman</a>’s ethereal image was made in 1908 and it remains proverbial (it is even called <em>The Spirit of Photography</em>). For whatever else may be said of it, the practice – and magic – of photography lies in its ability to preserve a fragment of reality intact for the future, no matter how momentary the subject. Nowadays, Brigman’s bubble could be photographed a thousand times before it burst, using high-speed shutters, but still each shot would exemplify the same original miracle: the past fixed forever in our present.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/11/drawn-by-light-review-royal-photographic-society-collection-science-museum-stupendous-selection">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureExhibitionsSun, 11 Jan 2015 08:00:17 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/11/drawn-by-light-review-royal-photographic-society-collection-science-museum-stupendous-selectionLaura Cumming2015-01-11T08:00:17ZA Question of England review – John Comino-James’s images of a fractured landhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/11/a-question-of-england-review-john-comino-james-images-fragemnted-land
<p>These black-and-white photos of high streets and towns reveal a country in a state of flux</p><p>This <a href="http://www.dewilewis.com/products/a-question-of-england" title="">book</a> somehow slipped under my radar when it was published a few months ago, but it is worth seeking out for several reasons. The first is that, as its title suggests, it looks, quietly and attentively, at an England in flux, but not in the way that we might have expected following a year in which the question of England – and Scotland, and the United Kingdom – suddenly became beset with panic. Instead, <a href="http://www.johncominojames.co.uk/" title="">John Comino-James</a>’s focus is wider, more reflective and underpinned by his own journey, his own shifting sense of Englishness.</p><p>The afterword to the photographs is called A Question of England, A Question of Home. It is also a book, then, about belonging, identity and roots, both personal and communal. In this, it has some similarities with other photobooks that explore comparable subject matter: <a href="http://www.we-english.co.uk/" title=""><em>We English</em></a> by Simon Roberts, say, or, more elliptically, <a href="http://www.andysewell.com/something-like-a-nest/something-like-a-nest" title=""><em>Something Like a Nest</em></a><em> </em>by Andy Sewell. But Comino-James’s approach is, for want of a better term, more generationally defined. Born in Somerset in 1943, he has lived though a time in which Englishness has gone from being a fixed idea to an often uncertain, even riven one.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/11/a-question-of-england-review-john-comino-james-images-fragemnted-land">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyBooksCultureSun, 11 Jan 2015 11:30:15 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/11/a-question-of-england-review-john-comino-james-images-fragemnted-landSean O'Hagan2015-01-11T11:30:15ZWalkie Talkie review – bloated, inelegant, thuggishhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/04/20-fenchurch-street-walkie-talkie-review-rowan-moore-sky-garden
<strong>20 Fenchurch Street, London EC3</strong><br />Despite grand claims to design excellence and public benefit, the 37-storey London skyscraper known as the Walkie Talkie seems to bear no meaningful relationship to its surroundings<p>When, for the love of God, will the word “iconic” finally die? It is more than a decade since the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/jul/12/architecture.regeneration" title="">architect Graham Morrison questioned</a> the way each new building strives “to be more extraordinary and shocking in order to eclipse the last. Each new design has to be instantly memorable – more iconic. This one-upmanship was, and is, a fatuous and self-indulgent game.” Yet again and again, in the planning pitch for the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/22/thames-garden-bridge-huge-expensive-folly" title="">Garden Bridge</a>, or the sales blurbs of buildings such as 20&nbsp;Fenchurch Street (“take your place at this iconic address”), the word is wielded as one which permits no further&nbsp;argument.</p><p>Could this usage please end in 2015? And with it, could we also see the end of the habit of calling places “public” when they are not? Again, 20&nbsp;Fenchurch Street, better known as the Walkie Talkie, is at the top of the game: the “<a href="http://www.20fenchurchstreet.co.uk/sky-garden.html" title="">Sky Garden</a>” at its summit is “the UK’s tallest public park”, you are told, when you ring its booking line. I don’t think they mean “tallest” – this would mean that the park was exceptionally vertical – but “highest”, meaning a long way off the ground. But then they might have faced rival claims from Snowdonia or the Cairngorms, so they need some linguistic fudge.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/04/20-fenchurch-street-walkie-talkie-review-rowan-moore-sky-garden">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureLondonSkyscrapersCitiesDesignArt and designCultureSun, 04 Jan 2015 08:45:17 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/04/20-fenchurch-street-walkie-talkie-review-rowan-moore-sky-gardenRowan Moore2015-01-04T08:45:17ZRubens the master decorator rides into Royal Academyhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/26/rubens-master-decorator-royal-academy
He used to be called ‘The Prince of Painters’ – this old term of praise is today more like a warning light<p>The first art blockbuster of 2015 will see Peter Paul Rubens riding into the Royal Academy, probably in a golden chariot pulled by four leopards with the muse of Painting at his side, a bevy of plump nymphs hailing his triumph and the gods declaring his apotheosis from fire-fringed clouds.</p><p>The art of this Flemish painter who decorated palaces and banqueting halls, went on diplomatic and spying missions, owned a landed estate and somehow found time to fill the Old Master galleries of the world with colossal canvases of boar and lion hunts, characterful portraits, epic history paintings and visceral sea monsters in the not so copious 63 years he lived from 1577 to 1640, is a world in itself. Rubens satisfied the horror vacui of an entire generation of absolutist monarchs.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/26/rubens-master-decorator-royal-academy">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArtRoyal Academy of ArtsExhibitionsArt and designFri, 26 Dec 2014 17:45:14 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/26/rubens-master-decorator-royal-academyJonathan Jones2014-12-26T17:45:14ZJames Turrell: A Retrospective review – light and colour reach for the sublimehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/15/james-turrell-retrospective-review-light-and-colour-reach-for-the-sublime
<p><strong>National Gallery of Australia, Canberra</strong><br>The American artist plays with real and artificial light to create tricks on the mind and eye, invoking a feeling of awe that’s rare in contemporary art</p><p>• <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/15/james-turrell-retrospective-review-light-and-colour-reach-for-the-sublime">James Turrell interview: I can make the sky any colour you choose</a></p><p>James Turrell has <a href="http://rodencrater.com/james">worked throughout his five-decade career</a> with an essential ingredient of art: light. From works on paper and holograms to immersive gallery installations and the monumental earth work <a href="http://rodencrater.com/about">Roden Crater</a> in Arizona’s Painted Desert, Turrell is fascinated with the perceptual mechanics of vision and how the manipulation of real and artificial light can play tricks on the mind and eye.<br /></p><p>The National Gallery of Australia’s <a href="http://nga.gov.au/JamesTurrell/Default.cfm">retrospective of the artist</a> is a major career survey spanning early 1960s Turrell through to recent pieces, including the gallery’s permanent installation of Within Without (2010). And it gives visitors something that’s pretty rare in contemporary art these days – an experience without need of interpretation or foreknowledge of the artist’s intentions or history. It simply <em>is.</em></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/15/james-turrell-retrospective-review-light-and-colour-reach-for-the-sublime">Continue reading...</a>ArtExhibitionsInstallationArt and designCultureCanberraMon, 15 Dec 2014 06:43:16 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/15/james-turrell-retrospective-review-light-and-colour-reach-for-the-sublimeAndrew Frost2014-12-15T06:43:16ZLos Carpinteros; Christina Mackie: The Filters – reviewhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/los-carpinteros-parasol-unit-review-christina-mackie-filters-tate-britain
<strong>Parasol Unit; Tate Britain, London</strong><br />Cuba’s Los Carpinteros unleash their acute wit and craftsmanship to exhilarating effect using Lego, carnival and a lot of tomatoes <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/los-carpinteros-parasol-unit-review-christina-mackie-filters-tate-britain">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureTate BritainSun, 29 Mar 2015 06:00:08 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/los-carpinteros-parasol-unit-review-christina-mackie-filters-tate-britainLaura Cumming2015-03-29T06:00:08ZThe Photograph and Australia review – a superb study of national identityhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/24/the-photograph-and-australia-review-superb-study-of-national-identity
<p><strong>Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney<br></strong>Major new survey examines the place of image-making and truth-telling in the Australian national story, boldly mixing history and contemporary art</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/24/the-photograph-and-australia-review-superb-study-of-national-identity">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArtArt and designAustralia newsIndigenous AustraliansSydneyCultureTue, 24 Mar 2015 02:44:27 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/24/the-photograph-and-australia-review-superb-study-of-national-identityAndrew Frost2015-03-24T02:44:27ZMaaike Schoorel: Sub-Lo; Christian Rosa – reviewhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/22/maaike-schoorel-sub-lo-christian-rosa-white-cube-review
<p><strong> Maureen Paley; White Cube Mason’s Yard, London</strong><br>That you can’t quite see Maaike Schoorel’s paintings seems to be the point. But there’s no missing the antic joy of Christian Rosa</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/22/maaike-schoorel-sub-lo-christian-rosa-white-cube-review">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureSun, 22 Mar 2015 07:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/22/maaike-schoorel-sub-lo-christian-rosa-white-cube-reviewLaura Cumming2015-03-22T07:00:04ZRichard Diebenkorn review – gorgeous, serious, hard-won work of a lifetimehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/richard-diebenkorn-review-royal-academy-gorgeous-serious-hard-won
<p><strong>Royal Academy, London</strong><br>A beautifully arranged overview of Richard Diebenkorn’s work, from blazing California abstracts to figuration and back again, dazzles and delights</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/richard-diebenkorn-review-royal-academy-gorgeous-serious-hard-won">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArtArt and designExhibitionsCultureRoyal Academy of ArtsFri, 13 Mar 2015 14:59:20 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/richard-diebenkorn-review-royal-academy-gorgeous-serious-hard-wonLaura Cumming2015-03-13T14:59:20ZTrevor Paglen review: turning the NSA's data combing into high-concept arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/trevor-paglen-art-review-nsa-surveillance-systems
<p><strong>Altman Siegel gallery, San Francisco</strong><br>The artist, who contributed to Citizenfour, makes the unseen surveillance systems overlooking our lives visible – and sometimes beautiful</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/trevor-paglen-art-review-nsa-surveillance-systems">Continue reading...</a>Art and designNSAArtCultureFri, 13 Mar 2015 11:00:11 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/trevor-paglen-art-review-nsa-surveillance-systemsGlen Helfand2015-03-13T11:00:11ZArmory Show and Art Show: New York's fairs see painting thrivehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/armory-show-art-show-new-york-fairs-painting-thrives
<p>Look past the ‘zombie formalism’ aimed at taste-challenged oligarchs, and you’ll see some intense, confident and downright sensual painting</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/armory-show-art-show-new-york-fairs-painting-thrives">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCultureThe art marketArtNew YorkUS newsThu, 05 Mar 2015 18:44:55 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/armory-show-art-show-new-york-fairs-painting-thrivesJason Farago2015-03-05T18:44:55ZGiddy up! The subversive sculpture on the fourth plinth is a dark horsehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/gift-horse-hans-haackes-subversive-fourth-plinth-sculpture
<p>Hans Haacke’s Gift Horse fits in with the 19th-century statues in Trafalgar Square – but what do the LED stock market updates on its leg mean?</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/gift-horse-hans-haackes-subversive-fourth-plinth-sculpture">Continue reading...</a>Fourth plinthArt and designArtSculptureCultureLondonUK newsThu, 05 Mar 2015 13:51:20 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/gift-horse-hans-haackes-subversive-fourth-plinth-sculptureAdrian Searle2015-03-05T13:51:20ZEverything is Design: The Work of Paul Rand review – short survey of a masterhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/27/everything-is-design-the-work-of-paul-rand-review-short-survey-of-a-master
<p>The graphic designer and ad man set the benchmark for corporate branding, but this show could benefit from more context about his influences</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/27/everything-is-design-the-work-of-paul-rand-review-short-survey-of-a-master">Continue reading...</a>DesignArt and designAdvertisingCultureIBMFri, 27 Feb 2015 19:03:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/27/everything-is-design-the-work-of-paul-rand-review-short-survey-of-a-masterAmelia Stein2015-02-27T19:03:06ZAlex Katz: Black Paintings review – 'A miraculous artist'http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/26/alex-katz-black-paintings-review-artist-exhibition
<p><strong>Timothy Taylor Gallery, London</strong><br>Katz’s magazine-illustrator method seems doomed to fail, yet this sublime exhibition of portraiture exposes the simple truths he paints</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/26/alex-katz-black-paintings-review-artist-exhibition">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArt and designIllustrationExhibitionsCultureArtThu, 26 Feb 2015 13:07:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/26/alex-katz-black-paintings-review-artist-exhibitionJonathan Jones2015-02-26T13:07:02ZYour pictures: share your photographs on the theme of 'indulge'http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/28/your-pictures-share-your-photographs-on-the-theme-of-indulge
<p>Wherever you are in the world, we’d like to see your pictures of ‘indulge.’ Share your best photos via GuardianWitness<br></p><ul><li><a href="http://gu.com/p/47x6y/stw">Readers’ pictures on the theme of ‘fast’</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/28/your-pictures-share-your-photographs-on-the-theme-of-indulge">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureSat, 28 Mar 2015 22:35:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/28/your-pictures-share-your-photographs-on-the-theme-of-indulgeTom Stevens and Guardian readers2015-03-28T22:35:06ZGlasgow School of Art to be restored by local firm Page\Parkhttp://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/31/glasgow-school-art-restored-page-park
<p>Construction of Charles Rennie Mackintosh library is being analysed before it is carefully restored, with 21st century thinking</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/31/glasgow-school-art-restored-page-park">Continue reading...</a>Glasgow School of ArtGlasgowArchitectureScotlandUK newsHigher educationTue, 31 Mar 2015 17:15:36 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/31/glasgow-school-art-restored-page-parkHaroon Siddique2015-03-31T17:15:36ZThe best of Weegee's New York street photography – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/mar/31/the-best-of-weegees-new-york-street-photography-in-pictures
<p>From crime-chasing news hound to art-world darling, the cult photographer’s unmistakeable images capture all the drama of life in the Big Apple. His work is celebrated in a new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Weegee-Guide-New-York/dp/3791353551">The Weegee Guide to New York</a></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/mar/31/the-best-of-weegees-new-york-street-photography-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>CitiesArtArt and designPhotographyArchitectureNew YorkNew YorkCultureUnited StatesTue, 31 Mar 2015 12:52:05 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/mar/31/the-best-of-weegees-new-york-street-photography-in-picturesGuardian Cities2015-03-31T12:52:05ZTimur's Registan: noblest public square in the world? – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 7http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/31/registan-samarkand-square-history-cities-buildings
<p>The influence of this ancient Uzbek grand square stretches far across the world’s cities, from Isfahan in Iran to Agra in India and Russia’s St Petersburg</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/31/registan-samarkand-square-history-cities-buildings">Continue reading...</a>CitiesUzbekistanUrbanisationUzbekistanArchitectureHistoryWorld newsTravelArt and designCultureTue, 31 Mar 2015 08:34:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/31/registan-samarkand-square-history-cities-buildingsSrinath Perur2015-03-31T08:34:00ZGoogle doodle marks day Eiffel tower was opened to publichttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/google-doodle-eiffel-tower-opened
<p>It’s 126 years since work was compelted on Gustave Eiffel’s famous structure – still the tallest building in Paris<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/google-doodle-eiffel-tower-opened">Continue reading...</a>Google doodleParisGoogleArchitectureFranceEuropeWorld newsTue, 31 Mar 2015 00:10:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/google-doodle-eiffel-tower-openedGuardian staff2015-03-31T00:10:07ZParis's Galeries de Bois, prototype of the modern shopping centre – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 6http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/30/galeries-de-bois-paris-history-cities-50-buildings
<p>Taking inspiration from the souks of Arabia and the forums of ancient Rome, the Galeries de Bois were the artistic, social and political centre of the French capital</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/30/galeries-de-bois-paris-history-cities-50-buildings">Continue reading...</a>CitiesParisParisFranceFranceEuropeTravelWorld newsArchitectureArt and designEuropeMon, 30 Mar 2015 09:03:39 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/30/galeries-de-bois-paris-history-cities-50-buildingsKim Willsher in Paris2015-03-30T09:03:39ZOn my radar: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s cultural highlightshttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/29/nikolaj-coster-waldau-jamie-lannister-tina-fey-louis-ck
<p>The Game of Thrones actor on his love of off-the-wall architecture, comics Tina Fey and Louis CK and a good Thai meal</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/29/nikolaj-coster-waldau-jamie-lannister-tina-fey-louis-ck">Continue reading...</a>CultureGame of ThronesTina FeyLouis CKArchitectureThai food and drinkAirbnbSun, 29 Mar 2015 08:15:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/29/nikolaj-coster-waldau-jamie-lannister-tina-fey-louis-ckInterview by Kathryn Bromwich2015-03-29T08:15:00ZWhat use is the London skyline campaign?http://www.theguardian.com/cities/davehillblog/2015/mar/28/what-use-is-the-london-skyline-campaign
<p>Opponents of the proliferation of tall buildings in the capital joined forces a year ago but height isn’t the issue that matters most<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/davehillblog/2015/mar/28/what-use-is-the-london-skyline-campaign">Continue reading...</a>CitiesUK newsBoris JohnsonPoliticsKen LivingstoneLondonArchitectureArt and designCultureSocietyHousingCommunitiesSat, 28 Mar 2015 08:22:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/davehillblog/2015/mar/28/what-use-is-the-london-skyline-campaignDave Hill2015-03-28T08:22:01ZWill Self on the meaning of skyscrapers – from the Tower of Babel to the Shardhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/27/will-self-on-the-meaning-of-skyscrapers
<p>Skyscrapers are all too evidently phallic symbols, monuments to capitalism and icons of hubris. Yet Will Self can’t help but love them. He explores their significance – from JG Ballard to Mad Men, and from London to Dubai</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/27/will-self-on-the-meaning-of-skyscrapers">Continue reading...</a>BooksArchitectureArt and designCultureJG BallardLord of the RingsCitiesSkyscrapersFri, 27 Mar 2015 11:11:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/27/will-self-on-the-meaning-of-skyscrapersWill Self2015-03-27T11:11:09ZTimbuktu's Djinguereber mosque: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 5http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/27/timbuktu-djinguereber-mosque-history-cities-buildings
<p>Constructed from the very earth on which it stands, Timbuktu’s oldest mosque is at the heart of daily life in the ancient city, loyally maintained by the proud descendants of its original builders</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/27/timbuktu-djinguereber-mosque-history-cities-buildings">Continue reading...</a>CitiesMaliAfricaArchitectureWorld newsUrbanisationMaliAfricaArt and designIslamReligionTravelFri, 27 Mar 2015 09:52:51 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/27/timbuktu-djinguereber-mosque-history-cities-buildingsAlex Duval Smith in Timbuktu2015-03-27T09:52:51ZDelhi's 16th-century Purana Qila fort: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 4http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/26/delhi-purana-qila-fort-history-cities-buildings
<p>Evolving alongside the rival powers of Delhi’s earliest rulers, Purana Qila exists as a window into the true – and the mythical – histories of India’s capital city</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/26/delhi-purana-qila-fort-history-cities-buildings">Continue reading...</a>CitiesUrbanisationIndiaDelhiDelhiArchitectureHistoryAsiaIndiaTravelSouth and Central AsiaEducationWorld newsThu, 26 Mar 2015 07:00:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/26/delhi-purana-qila-fort-history-cities-buildingsSrinath Perur2015-03-26T07:00:01ZCoricancha, the Incas' temple of the sun: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 3http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/25/cusco-coricancha-temple-history-cities-50-buildings
<p>Built in the shadows of the Andes, Cusco’s golden temple was the centrepiece of an empire that revolutionised city planning in South America</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/25/cusco-coricancha-temple-history-cities-50-buildings">Continue reading...</a>CitiesUrbanisationArchitecturePeruArchaeologySouth AmericaArt and designHistoryAmericasCultureWorld newsWed, 25 Mar 2015 11:53:21 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/25/cusco-coricancha-temple-history-cities-50-buildingsDrew Reed in Cusco2015-03-25T11:53:21ZSyria's war-scarred citadel of Aleppo: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 2http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/24/syria-war-citadel-aleppo-history-cities-buildings
<p>In the oldest city in the world, Aleppo’s historic citadel offers a poignant and ongoing narrative of the impact of war on a city’s development<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/24/syria-war-citadel-aleppo-history-cities-buildings">Continue reading...</a>CitiesSyriaUrbanisationAleppoArchitectureMiddle East and North AfricaWorld newsSyriaMiddle EastHistoryTue, 24 Mar 2015 09:45:24 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/24/syria-war-citadel-aleppo-history-cities-buildingsJonathan Steele2015-03-24T09:45:24ZWhich buildings tell great stories about urban history?http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/23/50-buildings-great-stories-urban-history
<p>From the earliest pyramids to the tallest skyscrapers of today, our <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/history-cities-50-buildings">history of cities in 50 buildings</a> explores the built narratives of urban history. But which buildings around the world do you think tell important stories?</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/23/egypt-pyramid-zoser-history-cities-50-buildings">A history of cities in 50 buildings: Egypt’s 4,600-year-old pyramid of Zoser</a><br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/23/50-buildings-great-stories-urban-history">Continue reading...</a>CitiesArchitectureHistoryMon, 23 Mar 2015 16:16:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/23/50-buildings-great-stories-urban-historyGuardian Staff2015-03-23T16:16:29ZEgypt's 4,600-year-old pyramid of Zoser: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 1http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/23/egypt-pyramid-zoser-history-cities-50-buildings
<p>We kick off our new, 50-part series with a building that changed the course of human history. Erected in Memphis, one of the world’s first purpose-built cities, the step-pyramid of Zoser is the oldest large-scale stone monument still standing<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/23/egypt-pyramid-zoser-history-cities-50-buildings">Continue reading...</a>CitiesUrbanisationEgyptEgyptologyArchaeologyMiddle East and North AfricaAfricaWorld newsArchitectureArt and designCultureHistoryMon, 23 Mar 2015 09:58:33 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/23/egypt-pyramid-zoser-history-cities-50-buildingsPatrick Kingsley in Cairo2015-03-23T09:58:33ZThe week in arts: Bell Shakespeare at 25, Dirtsong, Droga and From the Rubblehttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2015/mar/23/the-week-in-aussie-arts
<p>Bell Shakespeare marks 25 years in Canberra, photographer Anne Zahalka talks art in Brisbane and learn about Scando-influenced architecture in Sydney</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2015/mar/23/the-week-in-aussie-arts">Continue reading...</a>CultureAustralian theatreArchitectureArtArt and designMusicIndigenous AustraliansMon, 23 Mar 2015 06:10:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2015/mar/23/the-week-in-aussie-artsAnna Madeleine2015-03-23T06:10:02ZThe real Mad Men: Mac Conner's stunning New York illustrations – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/sep/08/mad-man-mac-conner-a-new-york-life-magazine-illustrations-in-pictures
<p>Mac Conner arrived in New York in 1950 and built a career in the city’s vibrant publishing industry with his crisp, hand-painted illustrations. See the classics he created for Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and more at the <a href="http://www.houseofillustration.org.uk">House of Illustration</a>, London, until 28 June</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/sep/08/mad-man-mac-conner-a-new-york-life-magazine-illustrations-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>IllustrationArtExhibitionsArt and designAdvertisingCultureMagazinesMon, 08 Sep 2014 06:00:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/sep/08/mad-man-mac-conner-a-new-york-life-magazine-illustrations-in-picturesGuardian Staff2014-09-08T06:00:06ZEyewitness: Putrajaya, Malaysiahttp://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2015/mar/13/eyewitness-putrajaya-malaysia
<p>Photographs from the Eyewitness series</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2015/mar/13/eyewitness-putrajaya-malaysia">Continue reading...</a>MalaysiaArtVan GoghWorld newsAsia PacificFri, 13 Mar 2015 12:18:46 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2015/mar/13/eyewitness-putrajaya-malaysiaChong Voon/Xinhua Press/Corbis2015-03-13T12:18:46ZThe art of Mambo: the bastard child of Australian surf culture – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/11/mambo-artwork-retrospective-the-bastard-child-of-australian-surf-culture-in-pictures
<p>A three-decade retrospective of Mambo art has come to Sydney’s Ambush gallery, following a successful run at the National Gallery of Victoria. Self-described as the “bastard children of surf culture”, Mambo was established in 1984 and quickly rose to fame thanks to its irreverent sense of humour. <a href="http://www.centralparksydney.com/shop/mambo-30-years-of-shelf-indulgence">Mambo: 30 Years of Shelf-Indulgence Exhibition</a> (11 March – 26 April) features the works of Reg Mombassa, Emily Vanderlism and Numskull who mixed an unconventional celebration of the Australian identity with a surrealist sensibility. Here, Mambo’s managing director Angus Kingsmill takes us through some of the label’s key artworks</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/11/mambo-artwork-retrospective-the-bastard-child-of-australian-surf-culture-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>Art and designArtCultureFashionLife and styleWed, 11 Mar 2015 00:35:37 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/11/mambo-artwork-retrospective-the-bastard-child-of-australian-surf-culture-in-picturesAngus Kingsmill2015-03-11T00:35:37ZLet's all move to Mars! The space architects shaping our futurehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/space-architects-shaping-plans-for-life-on-moon-and-mars
<p>We’ve had starchitects. Now we’ve got space architects. Oliver Wainwright meets the people measuring up the red planet for inflatable homes and farms made of moondust concrete<br></p><ul><li><a href="http://theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/09/life-on-mars-a-timeline-of-space-architecture-in-pictures">Life on Mars: a timeline of space architecture – in pictures </a></li></ul><p>Fifty years from now, says Brent Sherwood, there will be a different kind of honeymoon on offer. “Imagine a hotel with a view that’s changing all the time,” says the Nasa space architect, “where there are 18 sunrises and sunsets every day, where food floats effortlessly into your mouth – and where you can have zero-gravity sex. Who wouldn’t sign up for that?”</p><p>Born the same year as Nasa, 1958, Sherwood trained as an architect and aerospace engineer. Having spent the past 25 years working on plans for everything from orbital cities to planetary settlements, he is convinced it’s only a matter of time before space travel becomes a regular holiday option and we’re living and working on the moon. There’s only one drawback. “Nobody knows how to cook in space,” he says. “Until you can mix a martini or make an omelette, you can’t have a space hotel. No one is going to pay $1m a night and put up with microwave meals.”</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/08/buzz-aldrin-ama-mars-colony-moon-landing">Buzz Aldrin's AMA: colonising Mars and the moon's 'magnificent desolation'</a> </p><p>It would cost $500,000 to send a single brick to the moon</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/09/mars-one-mission-a-one-way-trip-to-the-red-planet-in-2024">Mars One mission: a one-way trip to the red planet in 2024</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/space-architects-shaping-plans-for-life-on-moon-and-mars">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureCultureArt and designSpaceScienceMarsThe moonInternational Space StationDesignFarmingMon, 09 Mar 2015 18:52:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/09/space-architects-shaping-plans-for-life-on-moon-and-marsOliver Wainwright2015-03-09T18:52:00ZMajor laser: the brightest light in the universe, photographed B-movie stylehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/laser-brightest-light-universe-photographs-robert-shults-petawatt-austin-texas
<p>When Texas photographer Robert Shults gained unprecedented access to a Petawatt laser – which can create temperatures 1,000 times hotter than the centre of the sun – he drew on his favourite sci-fi films to show the facility in action</p><p>It is hard to evoke the wondrous power of the Petawatt laser, an example of which is found in a laboratory <a href="http://texaspetawatt.ph.utexas.edu/overview.php">three storeys underground at the University of Texas</a>.</p><p>If focused for an instant (one 10th of a trillionth of a second) on a spot one 10th the width of a human hair, it produces the brightest light in the universe – brighter than that created by black-hole-driven explosions. When targeted into a gas, the 1000tn-watt laser can create temperatures 1,000 times hotter than the centre of the sun.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/laser-brightest-light-universe-photographs-robert-shults-petawatt-austin-texas">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureScienceHomelessnessSocial exclusionHousingSocietyUS newsWorld newsThu, 05 Mar 2015 12:41:49 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/05/laser-brightest-light-universe-photographs-robert-shults-petawatt-austin-texasSean O'Hagan2015-03-05T12:41:49ZPretty in pink: what spring looks like in infrared – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/03/pretty-in-pink-what-spring-looks-like-in-infrared-in-pictures
<p>Deep magentas, dazzling fuschias and candyfloss blooms: here’s the hot flush of spring, enhanced by infrared photography</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/03/pretty-in-pink-what-spring-looks-like-in-infrared-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureEnvironmentPlantsTue, 03 Mar 2015 07:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/03/pretty-in-pink-what-spring-looks-like-in-infrared-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-03-03T07:00:09ZPutin's teenage fan club: the Russian president's young devotees – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/27/vladimir-putin-teenage-fan-club-russia-president-young-devotees-in-pictures
<p>They stick Vladimir Putin posters on their bedroom walls, proudly wear T-shirts with his face on and pore over his TV appearances. Photographer Bela Doka ventured to Moscow’s suburbs to meet the VV Putin appreciation society</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/27/vladimir-putin-teenage-fan-club-russia-president-young-devotees-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyVladimir PutinRussiaArt and designCultureEuropeFri, 27 Feb 2015 07:00:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/27/vladimir-putin-teenage-fan-club-russia-president-young-devotees-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-02-27T07:00:02ZIt all started here: the dawn of photography – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/25/salt-silver-tate-the-dawn-of-photography
<p>Nelson’s Column being built, the pyramids of Giza, soldiers in the Crimean War and fishwives in Edinburgh ... here’s what the pioneers of a newly invented medium, from Roger Fenton to William Henry Fox Talbot, picked as their subjects in the 1840s and 50s<br></p><ul><li><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/salt-and-silver-early-photography-1840-1860">Salt and Silver: Early Photography 1840-1860</a> is at Tate Britain, London SW1, until 7 June<br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/25/salt-silver-tate-the-dawn-of-photography">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureWed, 25 Feb 2015 07:00:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/25/salt-silver-tate-the-dawn-of-photographyGuardian Staff2015-02-25T07:00:06ZBurmese days: glimpses of a lost kingdom – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/23/burmese-days-glimpses-of-a-lost-kingdom-in-pictures
<p>British photographer Captain Linnaeus Tripe documented the stunning cultural artefacts of Burma and South India in the mid-19th century with an unprecedented series of photos. The first major collection of his work will be on display <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2015/linnaeus-tripe">at the Metropolitan Museum of Art</a> from 24 February until 25 May<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/23/burmese-days-glimpses-of-a-lost-kingdom-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyCultureArtArt and designMon, 23 Feb 2015 07:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/23/burmese-days-glimpses-of-a-lost-kingdom-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-02-23T07:00:09ZThe Impossibles: amazing bodily feats from the past – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/18/the-impossibles-amazing-bodily-feats-from-the-past-in-pictures
<p>A man stuck in an elephant’s mouth, an upside-down surfer, and a car parked on a stuntman’s stomach ... meet the daredevils who stretched the limits of human endurance with these mind-boggling acts<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/18/the-impossibles-amazing-bodily-feats-from-the-past-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureWed, 18 Feb 2015 07:00:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/18/the-impossibles-amazing-bodily-feats-from-the-past-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-02-18T07:00:07ZStill crazy in love: happy couples together for over 50 years – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/12/happy-couples-together-over-50-years-lauren-fleishman-still-crazy-in-love-in-pictures
<p>When Lauren Fleishman discovered her grandfather’s early love letters to her grandmother, she was moved to find and photograph couples who have been together more than half a century. In her new photobook, The Lovers, they share their stories of lifelong success</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/12/happy-couples-together-over-50-years-lauren-fleishman-still-crazy-in-love-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyRelationshipsArt and designCultureArtUS newsThu, 12 Feb 2015 07:00:16 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/12/happy-couples-together-over-50-years-lauren-fleishman-still-crazy-in-love-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-02-12T07:00:16ZMob deep: Russian mafia gravestones – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/13/mob-deep-russian-mafia-gravestones-in-pictures
<p>In Denis Tarasov’s series of grandiose tributes, the graves of Russian gangsters and their families in Yekaterinburg are eerily decorated with cars, jewels and fine wines to flaunt their wealth</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/13/mob-deep-russian-mafia-gravestones-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyCultureMafiaRussiaArt and designFri, 13 Feb 2015 07:00:25 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/13/mob-deep-russian-mafia-gravestones-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-02-13T07:00:25ZThe 20 photographs of the weekhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/14/twenty-photographs-of-the-week
<p>The ceasefire in Ukraine, Ivory Coast winning the Africa Cup of Nations, drought in Brazil – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/14/twenty-photographs-of-the-week">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCultureSportFootballAfrica Cup of NationsAfrica Cup of Nations 2015Ivory CoastSouth AfricaPalestinian territoriesIsraelUkraineMadonnaDominique Strauss-KahnBrazilEnvironmentSouth SudanFashionAfricaAmericasEuropeLife and styleMiddle East and North AfricaSat, 14 Feb 2015 15:03:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/14/twenty-photographs-of-the-weekJim Powell2015-02-14T15:03:01ZThe black experience: portraits of a communityhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/08/black-experience-photography-community-v-and-a
<p>A fascinating collaboration between the V&amp;A and the Black Cultural Archive charts the changing lives of black people in Britain and tells us much about who we are today</p><p>In 1988, I bumped into a friend walking back from a lecture. “I didn’t see you at the black students’ group,” I said.</p><p>“It’s just… all we ever seem to talk about is racism,” she said, sighing. I was immediately filled with undergraduate indignation: “What do you mean ‘all’? It’s important!”</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/09/staying-power-photographs-of-black-british-experience-in-pictures">Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience - in pictures</a> </p><p>We were reinterpreting and creating a new British black identity with style references from the US and elsewhere</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/08/black-experience-photography-community-v-and-a">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureImmigration and asylumUK newsRace issuesWorld newsSocietySun, 08 Feb 2015 00:05:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/08/black-experience-photography-community-v-and-aMatthew Ryder2015-02-08T00:05:00ZWelcome to New York: the city of dreams in the 70s and 80s – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/10/new-york-state-of-mind-manhattan-harlem-and-the-bronx-through-the-70s-and-80s-in-pictures
<p><a href="http://www.camilojosevergara.com/">Camilo José Vergara</a> has spent four decades documenting the changing landscapes of US cities. In the second of our three-part series, Vergara captures New York City at street level, from the rise of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan to kids on a stoop in Harlem</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/09/the-changing-streets-of-los-angeles-skid-row-camilo-jose-vergara">The changing streets of LA: 30 years on Skid Row – in pictures</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/10/new-york-state-of-mind-manhattan-harlem-and-the-bronx-through-the-70s-and-80s-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designNew YorkCultureCitiesTue, 10 Feb 2015 07:00:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/10/new-york-state-of-mind-manhattan-harlem-and-the-bronx-through-the-70s-and-80s-in-picturesMee-Lai Stone2015-02-10T07:00:04ZIt's a twin thing: the identical brother farmers from Hungary – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/06/its-a-twin-thing-the-identical-brother-farmers-from-hungary-in-pictures
<p>Miles from the nearest road on the great plains of Hungary, the Papp Lukács brothers lived off the vegetables they grew and the animals they reared. Their way of life was hardly touched by modernity – though they did own a radio, and rode mopeds to market. Over several seasons in the 1980s, photographer János Stekovics made a fascinating record of their rural lives, which is now a book</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/06/its-a-twin-thing-the-identical-brother-farmers-from-hungary-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designHungaryFarmingArt and designCultureArtEuropeFri, 06 Feb 2015 07:00:15 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/06/its-a-twin-thing-the-identical-brother-farmers-from-hungary-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-02-06T07:00:15ZAcid flashback: one man's LSD adventures – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/02/acid-flashback-one-mans-lsd-adventures-in-pictures
<p>Dawn love-ins at Stonehenge, dune diving in Carmel ... Roger Steffens met his wife when he was tripping, then spent years taking acid-soaked photos of her and his friends<br></p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/02/roger-steffens-the-family-acid-photography-60s-counterculture">Trip of a lifetime: Roger Steffens and The Family Acid</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/02/acid-flashback-one-mans-lsd-adventures-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureMon, 02 Feb 2015 07:00:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/02/acid-flashback-one-mans-lsd-adventures-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-02-02T07:00:01ZCome As You Are: the grungiest art of the 90s – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/03/come-as-you-are-grungiest-art-of-90s-in-pictures
<p>Rewind to a hazy, grungy time when women had green hair and obsessively wore bindis, and yuppies got laptop fever ... <a href="https://montclairartmuseum.org/content/come-you-are-art-1990s">Come As You Are: Art of the 1990s</a> is the first major survey of US art made between the fall of the Berlin wall and 9/11<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/03/come-as-you-are-grungiest-art-of-90s-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>Art and designPhotographyVideo artPaintingSculptureInstallationArtCultureTue, 03 Feb 2015 07:00:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/03/come-as-you-are-grungiest-art-of-90s-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-02-03T07:00:03ZChewing Gum and Chocolate: how the west seduced Japan – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/30/chewing-gum-and-chocolate-shomei-tomatsu-how-the-west-infiltrated-japan-in-pictures
<p>‘Culture, riding a mushroom cloud, came in from across the sea,’ wrote the Japanese photographer Shomei Tomatsu in 1959. From the 50s to the 70s, he travelled Japan photographing US military bases to show the Allied occupation of his country, and the fascination and repulsion he felt about it<br></p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/sep/06/shomei-tomatsu-japanese-photography">The man who changed Japanese photography</a><br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/30/chewing-gum-and-chocolate-shomei-tomatsu-how-the-west-infiltrated-japan-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyJapanAsia PacificUS newsSecond world warFri, 30 Jan 2015 07:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/30/chewing-gum-and-chocolate-shomei-tomatsu-how-the-west-infiltrated-japan-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-01-30T07:00:09ZThe truth is out there: your artworks of outer space – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/02/the-truth-is-out-there-your-artworks-of-outer-space-in-pictures
<p>Flying saucers that came from outer Suffolk, space junk cowboys, and businessmen from Mars. Here are your most outlandish extraterrestrial visions</p><ul><li><a href="http://preview.gutools.co.uk/artanddesign/guardianwitness-blog/2014/dec/22/share-your-art-your-chance-to-be-exhibited-in-london-and-new-york">Your chance to be exhibited in London and New York</a><br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/02/the-truth-is-out-there-your-artworks-of-outer-space-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCultureIllustrationDrawingMon, 02 Feb 2015 15:30:12 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/02/the-truth-is-out-there-your-artworks-of-outer-space-in-picturesGuardian readers2015-02-02T15:30:12ZRetromania: a heady trip through 20th-century design – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/26/retromania-greetings-from-retro-design-in-pictures
<p>From U-boat propaganda to Hitchcock posters and a fetish-masked Annie Lennox, here’s a rundown of the greatest innovators in the world of graphics</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/26/retromania-greetings-from-retro-design-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>DesignArt and designTypographyCultureMon, 26 Jan 2015 07:00:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/26/retromania-greetings-from-retro-design-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-01-26T07:00:02ZAfter the bomb: photographs show Japan’s rebirth from the rubblehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/23/photographs-japan-rebirth-hiroshima-modernity
<p>The second world war left Japan scarred and broken. A new show charts its recovery in the decades after Hiroshima, as street urchins gave way to student protests and modernity<br><br><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/23/rising-from-the-ashes-metamorphosis-japan-war-liverpool-in-pictures">• Rising from the ashes: snapshots of hope and renewal in postwar Japan – in pictures</a></p><p>On midday on 15 August 1945, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5MMVd5XOK8">radio broadcast announced the surrender of Japan to allied forces</a> in the second world war.</p><p>For many Japanese people, it was as if time itself had been stilled and the unthinkable had occurred. On hearing the news, the photographer Hiroshi Hamaya ran out into the street and pointed his camera at the midday sun high in the sky above <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niigata,_Niigata">Niigata</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/23/photographs-japan-rebirth-hiroshima-modernity">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureSecond world warWorld newsJapanAsia PacificFri, 23 Jan 2015 07:00:14 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/23/photographs-japan-rebirth-hiroshima-modernitySean O'Hagan2015-01-23T07:00:14ZThe train-jumpers: life and death on the railroads for US migrants – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/22/life-death-railroads-central-american-migrants-michelle-frankfurter-in-pictures
<p>For the Central Americans who leap on to moving freight trains and ride on roofs through Mexico, the path to the American dream is fraught with danger. Photographer <a href="http://www.michellefrankfurterphotos.com/">Michelle Frankfurter</a> shows the treacherous journey taken by people in search of a better life<br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/22/life-death-railroads-central-american-migrants-michelle-frankfurter-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designMigrationCultureThu, 22 Jan 2015 07:00:11 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/22/life-death-railroads-central-american-migrants-michelle-frankfurter-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-01-22T07:00:11ZThe face behind the perfect hands: headshots of hand models – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/20/the-face-behind-the-perfect-hands-headshots-of-hand-models-in-pictures
<p>Some of these digits are insured for seven figures ... and they feature in ad campaigns all over the globe. Watch world-renowned hand models as they peel bananas – and unmask themselves<br></p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/aug/01/worlds-top-hand-models-interview">Nailing it: face to face with the world’s top hand models</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/20/the-face-behind-the-perfect-hands-headshots-of-hand-models-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>Art and designPhotographyCultureTue, 20 Jan 2015 07:00:05 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/20/the-face-behind-the-perfect-hands-headshots-of-hand-models-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-01-20T07:00:05ZThe extraordinary ruins of St Peter's seminary, near Glasgow – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/17/the-extraordinary-ruins-of-st-peters-seminary-near-glasgow-in-pictures
<p>St Peter’s seminary was built in 1966 and abandoned in 1980. Thirty-five years of neglect have left their mark, but there are plans to restore it</p><ul><li><a href="http://gu.com/p/44py9">St Peter’s seminary – a second chance for Scotland’s modernist masterpiece</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/17/the-extraordinary-ruins-of-st-peters-seminary-near-glasgow-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureGlasgowScotlandUK newsCultureArt and designSat, 17 Jan 2015 23:00:08 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/17/the-extraordinary-ruins-of-st-peters-seminary-near-glasgow-in-picturesRowan Moore2015-01-17T23:00:08ZGhost trains and forgotten Ferris wheels: abandoned theme parks – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/07/ghost-trains-and-forgotten-ferris-wheels-abandoned-theme-parks-in-pictures
<p>Bumper cars stranded in the ruins of Chernobyl, fairgrounds flooded by Hurricane Katrina, and the rotting remains of a giant Gulliver captured in Japan. Prepare to be spooked by the creepiest lost amusement park </p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/07/spreepark-east-berlin-forgotten-theme-park-rollercoaster-story">Save the dinosaur: the rollercoaster story of East Berlin’s forgotten theme park</a><br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/07/ghost-trains-and-forgotten-ferris-wheels-abandoned-theme-parks-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureTheme parksArt and designCultureWed, 07 Jan 2015 17:54:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/07/ghost-trains-and-forgotten-ferris-wheels-abandoned-theme-parks-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-01-07T17:54:06ZBold, graphic and disturbing: the art of Marlene Dumas – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/11/bold-graphic-disturbing-the-art-of-marlene-dumas-in-pictures
<p>From a bloody-handed child to a closeup of Amy Winehouse looking blue, explore the haunting works of painter Marlene Dumas<a href="http://gu.com/p/44jyq"></a></p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/11/the-daring-art-of-marlene-dumas-duct-tape-pot-bellies-and-bin-laden">The daring art of Marlene Dumas: duct-tape, pot bellies and Bin Laden</a><br></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/11/bold-graphic-disturbing-the-art-of-marlene-dumas-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArtArt and designExhibitionsTate ModernCultureSun, 11 Jan 2015 00:01:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/11/bold-graphic-disturbing-the-art-of-marlene-dumas-in-picturesGuardian Staff2015-01-11T00:01:01ZThe best Californian graphic designs, 1936-1986 – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/10/the-best-californian-graphic-designs-1936-1986-in-pictures
<p>A gorgeous new book highlights Californian designs for posters, books, magazines, record covers and more, over a 50-year period. “So what makes California design deserving of special attention?” asks the book’s editor, Louise Sandhaus, a graphic designer. “California has no terra firma – earthquakes, mudslides, fires and the occasional civil uprising cause incessant upheaval and change… Without solid ground, tradition lacks secure footing; old rules go out the door and new motivations rush in, resulting in new and vibrant forms.” Here are some of our favourites…</p><ul><li><a href="http://bookshop.theguardian.com/earthquakes-mudslides-fires-riots.html">Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires &amp; Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936–1986</a> is published on 12 January by Thames and Hudson, £39.95</li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/10/the-best-californian-graphic-designs-1936-1986-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>DesignCaliforniaArt and designBooksArt and designUS newsCultureWorld newsSat, 10 Jan 2015 23:00:19 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/10/the-best-californian-graphic-designs-1936-1986-in-picturesCorinne Jones2015-01-10T23:00:19ZSanne De Wilde's Snow White series – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/03/sanne-de-wildes-snow-white-series-in-pictures
<p>Belgian-born, Amsterdam-based photographer Sanne De Wilde was working on a documentary series in a school for blind children when she met a partially sighted albino boy. “When I saw him I was really moved,” she says. “I felt that albinism is a vulnerable state of being, but it’s a fragility with a rare kind of beauty.” In this series, called Snow White, she leaves the personal details blank and focuses on the conceptual aspect. “I tried to emphasise the whiteness, but in a way that it transcends it and becomes very powerful.” She adds that the series is “not about people who are ‘different’ from the norm. Other people become ‘different’ because other people think they are.” See more of her work here on her <a href="http://www.sannedewilde.com">website</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/03/sanne-de-wildes-snow-white-series-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyCultureArt and designSat, 03 Jan 2015 23:00:05 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/03/sanne-de-wildes-snow-white-series-in-picturesKathryn Bromwich2015-01-03T23:00:05ZFace off: bizarre peeling portraits of Hollywood royalty – in pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/01/face-off-bizarre-peeling-portraits-hollywood-matthieu-bourel-sophia-loren-gregory-peck
<p>Sophia Loren’s face is caving in on itself, Yul Brynner has three heads but no brain and Gregory Peck has an entire family living in his skull. Artist Matthieu Bourel takes vintage Hollywood headshots down the rabbit hole</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/01/face-off-bizarre-peeling-portraits-hollywood-matthieu-bourel-sophia-loren-gregory-peck">Continue reading...</a>Art and designPhotographyCultureThu, 01 Jan 2015 07:00:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/01/face-off-bizarre-peeling-portraits-hollywood-matthieu-bourel-sophia-loren-gregory-peckGuardian Staff2015-01-01T07:00:03ZHow we made the Millennium Domehttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/17/how-we-made-the-millennium-dome-richard-rogers
Richard Rogers: ‘At the opening, we had furious VIPs saying: I’ll be writing about this catastrophe in the paper tomorrow!’<p></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/17/how-we-made-the-millennium-dome-richard-rogers">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureMillennium DomeArt and designCultureTue, 17 Mar 2015 07:00:18 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/17/how-we-made-the-millennium-dome-richard-rogersInterviews by Oliver Wainwright2015-03-17T07:00:18ZBob and Roberta Smith: on a mission to unseat Michael Govehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/bob-roberta-smith-michael-gove-surrey-heath-campaign
Furious about the state of education, Patrick Brill (AKA the artist Bob and Roberta Smith) is standing against Michael Gove in the election. Nick Curtis joins him as he takes to the streets of Bagshot – converting a dog-walker and one Tory councillor to his cause<p>“I call it the honeypot or the flypaper approach,” says Patrick Brill, better known as the slogan artist Bob and Roberta Smith. He’s talking about his unique style of canvassing: Smith is standing against Tory MP Michael Gove in Surrey Heath at the general election, in protest at what he sees as the coalition’s denigration of the arts in education. Rather than knock on doors or hector from a soapbox, Smith has been staging artistic happenings in the constituency, hoping to attract the curious and then hit them with his serious political points.</p><p>Last week, he filmed himself in Camberley town centre, where he went for a “psychogeographic” walk (it was dictated by an algorithm – second right, second right, first left, etc – so he didn’t know where he would end up). Russell Brand tweeted the YouTube link to his 8.7m followers, which is ironic given Brand’s attitude to voting. And today, Smith and I are off to Bagshot, a town that sounds like it was named after a shire-dwelling Tory colonel, where Smith plans to do some drawings and watercolours to “highlight the issues”.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/bob-roberta-smith-michael-gove-surrey-heath-campaign">Continue reading...</a>ArtBob and Roberta SmithMichael GoveArts in schoolsArts policyGeneral election 2015Art and designCultureMon, 16 Mar 2015 16:59:22 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/16/bob-roberta-smith-michael-gove-surrey-heath-campaignNick Curtis2015-03-16T16:59:22ZThe mystery of Mingering Mike: the soul legend who never existedhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/-sp-mystery-of-mingering-mike-the-soul-legend-who-never-existed-jon-ronson
<p>When a ‘crate-digger’ found a massive vinyl collection at a flea market, he couldn’t understand how a soul star who’d released over 100 records could just disappear. But the truth turned out to be even stranger. Jon Ronson goes in search of Mingering Mike</p><p>This story begins with a record collector unearthing something extraordinary at a flea market one dawn in 2003. His name is Dori Hadar. He worked as a criminal investigator for a law firm in Washington DC and he’d been up all night with a client at the jail next door.</p><p>“It’s a miserable place to be, the DC jail,” Hadar tells me. “It’s stuffy and muggy and everything’s old and decaying.”</p><p>A man is walking toward me – tall, mid-60s. 'Mingering Mike?' I say. He nods. As we say hello he’s avoiding eye contact.</p><p>“Cause when I get to war I might die/<br /> Kiss your friends and family goodbye/<br />They want to keep me here strong and alive (me too).” </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/-sp-mystery-of-mingering-mike-the-soul-legend-who-never-existed-jon-ronson">Continue reading...</a>Art and designIllustrationDrawingSoulArtCultureDesignWed, 11 Feb 2015 15:33:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/-sp-mystery-of-mingering-mike-the-soul-legend-who-never-existed-jon-ronsonJon Ronson2015-02-11T15:33:07ZDead Drops: what to do if you see a USB stick sticking out of a wallhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/mar/08/dead-drops-what-to-do-if-you-see-a-usb-stick-sticking-out-of-a-wall
If you spot a USB flash drive cemented into a wall or kerb, you may have stumbled across a Dead Drop, part of a global art project borrowing tricks from the world of espionage<br /><br /><p>I’ve always wanted to be a spy, but have never got over my inability to keep a secret, my wanton desire for attention and my half-hearted pacifism. But thanks to Dead Drops, an international community building “an anonymous, offline, peer-to-peer file-sharing network in public space”, I can at least live out my dream of putting on a long trenchcoat and sunglasses and swapping confidential information with strangers.</p><p>In the early days of espionage, spies needed a way to exchange sensitive material in public without meeting: a system of “dead drops” was developed (distinct from a “live drop”, when spies met). A small hollow behind a loose brick in an alleyway wall or under a flagstone on a towpath were perfect for stashing documents for contacts to pick up later.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/mar/08/dead-drops-what-to-do-if-you-see-a-usb-stick-sticking-out-of-a-wall">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designCultureSun, 08 Mar 2015 18:15:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/mar/08/dead-drops-what-to-do-if-you-see-a-usb-stick-sticking-out-of-a-wallAlex Hern2015-03-08T18:15:00ZRevealed: Boris Johnson's duplicitous handling of London's garden bridgehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/04/revealed-boris-johnson-duplicitous-handling-garden-bridge-london
<p>The London mayor categorically denies public funds will be needed for the garden bridge, while pledging taxpayers’ money to prop it up behind closed doors</p><p>It was billed as a miraculous no-strings-attached gift to London, a fairytale forest on a bridge that would be entirely paid for by private sponsors. But this sparkling new “tiara on the head of our fabulous city”, as Joanna Lumley, cheerleader for the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/24/garden-bridge-london-thomas-heatherwick-joanna-lumley">garden bridge</a>, has called it, is turning out to be a rather costly crown. In a confidential letter obtained by the Guardian it has emerged that the public will be liable for the bridge’s annual &pound;3.5m maintenance bill in perpetuity – on top of the &pound;60m of public funds already committed to the project.</p><p>The news goes against everything London’s mayor has pledged to date. On Tuesday, Boris Johnson again denied that further public money would be lavished on the scheme. “The maintenance cost will not be borne by the public sector, I’ve made that clear,” <a href="http://www.lbc.co.uk/watch-ask-boris-johnson-on-lbc-73547">he told LBC radio</a>. Yet in a letter from one of his senior staff to the Garden Bridge Trust, he appears to have made other plans.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/04/revealed-boris-johnson-duplicitous-handling-garden-bridge-london">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureBoris JohnsonLondonGreen spaceDesignArt and designUK newsPoliticsCultureEnvironmentThomas HeatherwickJoanna LumleyCitiesTFLTransportConstruction industryPhilanthropySocietyBusinessWed, 04 Mar 2015 23:47:57 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/04/revealed-boris-johnson-duplicitous-handling-garden-bridge-londonOliver Wainwright2015-03-04T23:47:57ZGraphic need: it's time to bring design into the spotlighthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/06/graphic-need-its-time-to-bring-design-into-the-spotlight
<p>From the moment you hit your alarm clock, you inhabit a world of graphic design ... but compared with architecture and fashion, it has a whisperingly low profile. Might plans for a new national centre kick it up a few font sizes?<br></p><p>You are bombarded with it every day, from the moment you stare bleary-eyed into your alarm clock, to the letters on this very page. Yet graphic design is almost entirely absent from public discourse. It’s everywhere, but hidden in plain sight.</p><p>Graphic design has always been the poor relation to its more lordly cousins. Architecture has a <a href="http://www.architecture.com/Explore/Home.aspx">Royal Institute</a>, an <a href="http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/">Architecture Foundation</a>, an <a href="http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/">Architectural Association</a> and almost more awards lavished on the profession than there are buildings completed each year. Fashion has its <a href="http://www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/">own museum</a>, its own special weeks and its attendant tomes of glossy magazines, while products and furniture take up the bulk of the <a href="https://designmuseum.org/">Design Museum</a>’s collection and enjoy annual festivals where chairs are put on pedestals. But graphic designers? If they’re lucky, they can pay through the nose for the chance to win a <a href="http://www.dandad.org/en/awards/">novelty yellow pencil</a>.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/06/dylan-doctor-who-100-years-of-eye-popping-graphic-design-in-pictures">Dylan to Doctor Who: 100 years of eye-popping graphic design – in pictures</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/06/graphic-need-its-time-to-bring-design-into-the-spotlight">Continue reading...</a>DesignArt and designIllustrationTypographyCultureExhibitionsNeville BrodyBen EineLondonUK newsFri, 06 Mar 2015 15:37:49 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/mar/06/graphic-need-its-time-to-bring-design-into-the-spotlightOliver Wainwright2015-03-06T15:37:49ZTrue crime: the women making art out of murderhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/24/forensics-the-anatomy-of-crime-wellcome-collection-female-artists
<p>From the photographer who uses CSI techniques to the woman who turned her friend’s murder scene into a work of art, a new exhibition puts female artists first at the scene of the crime. Emine Saner snaps on her latex gloves to find out why<br></p><p>It soon became clear to Sejla Kamerić how big her work, Ab Uno Disce Omne (From One, Learn All), would become. Commissioned by the Wellcome Collection for its new exhibition <a href="http://wellcomecollection.org/forensics-anatomy-crime">Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime</a>, the Bosnian artist – whose previous work has tried to make sense of the war that started when she was a teenager and killed her father – took on something huge. She describes it as a monument, but one made of data, not stone, and just as permanent. “I found out how the information about what happened is becoming lost,” she says. “Because of the political vacuum, even the scientific facts are being erased and the one thing which is very much needed is to have the collective narrative of what actually happened. The lack of, for example, a list of missing persons 20 years after the war is horrific, or the means of how to get the information on the location of mass graves or execution sites or concentration camps.”</p><p>More than 30,000 people are thought to have gone missing during the conflict, and around 9,000 are still unaccounted for. Kamerić’s work, a mortuary fridge with a screen that flashes up random images from her search – around 30,000 photographs, documents, records, satellite images and hours of video, provokes a feeling not only of her unfolding mission but the vast scale of the crimes. “I knew that we had to collect as much as possible,” says Kamerić, who worked with a team of researchers and spent months visiting families, mortuaries, sites of mass graves. “When you think about 34,000 missing, it’s just a number, but if you start counting it you understand – each single person had their own lives, families. One big wish for me is to show through this work how we are all connected, how each of us is just one knot in a huge web.”</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/26/val-mcdermid-extract-forensics-the-anatomy-of-crime">The grisly history of forensics – by crime writer Val McDermid</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/24/forensics-the-anatomy-of-crime-wellcome-collection-female-artists">Continue reading...</a>ArtExhibitionsPhotographyArt and designCultureTue, 24 Feb 2015 17:13:41 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/24/forensics-the-anatomy-of-crime-wellcome-collection-female-artistsEmine Saner2015-02-24T17:13:41ZGoogle's new headquarters: an upgradable, futuristic greenhousehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/27/googles-new-headquarters-upgradable-futuristic-greenhouse
<p>Designed by Thomas Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels, the company’s new California headquarters are glass domes set in a supercharged pastoral dream – with WiFi</p><p>The future of work, according to Google, will take place in woodland glades and wildflower meadows, next to trickling streams and verdant allotments, among bike paths and yoga classes and gushing fountains, with fresh produce on tap. It will be a pastoral utopia-with-WiFi, all safely swept beneath a series of gigantic glass tents.</p><p>Silicon Valley’s mother of all tech companies has today unveiled plans for its gargantuan new headquarters in Mountain View, California, designed by global star architects <a href="http://www.big.dk/#projects ">Bjarke Ingels</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/thomas-heatherwick">Thomas Heatherwick</a>. And it looks like a futuristic Center Parcs.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/27/googles-new-headquarters-upgradable-futuristic-greenhouse">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureGoogleDesignArt and designCultureTechnologyCaliforniaFri, 27 Feb 2015 21:08:40 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/27/googles-new-headquarters-upgradable-futuristic-greenhouseOliver Wainwright2015-02-27T21:08:40ZThe forgotten masterpieces of African modernismhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/african-modernist-architecture
<p>In the 1960s and 70s, countries across Africa celebrated their independence with astonishingly avant-garde architecture. Oliver Wainwright reports on a fascinating attempt to chronicle this forgotten history<br><br><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/01/afro-modernism-africa-avant-garde-architecture-boom-in-pictures">• Afro modernism: Africa’s avant-garde architecture boom – in pictures</a></p><p>Afield of triangular roofs pokes up above the horizon on the outskirts of Dakar, like a forest of wigwams that have been baked to stone under the scorching sub-Saharan sun. They sit on a triangular concrete plinth, from which bigger triangular pavilions protrude, accessed by flights of triangular steps from the dusty streets, along which triangular gutters jut out. It could be Toblerone Town, a city-sized hymn to the three-sided prism.</p><p>This mysterious complex, which looks like what might have happened if the Mayans had discovered reinforced concrete, is the <a href="http://www.cices-fidak.com/">Foire Internationale de Dakar</a>, or FIDAK for short. It is a sprawling exhibition centre built in the capital of Senegal in 1975 to host the country’s biennial international trade fair – and trumpet the new nationstate’s presence on the global stage. Designed by little-known French architects Jean-Fran&ccedil;ois Lamoureux and Jean-Louis Marin, it is a project of obsessive and extraordinary detail. There are facades decorated with coloured pebbles and tiled mosaics, psychedelic sand art murals that evoke the rocky African coastline and its azure seas. Yet outside Senegal, this building is almost entirely unknown.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/mar/01/afro-modernism-africa-avant-garde-architecture-boom-in-pictures">Afro modernism: Africa's avant-garde architecture boom – in pictures</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/african-modernist-architecture">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureArt and designAfricaDakarCultureSun, 01 Mar 2015 18:00:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/01/african-modernist-architectureOliver Wainwright2015-03-01T18:00:02ZTehran's answer to Banksy: Medhi Ghadyanloo hits Britainhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/26/mehdi-ghadyanloo-tehran-iran-street-art-banksy
<p>Flying cars, magic portals, levitating giraffes … street artist Medhi Ghadyanloo’s eye-popping murals make Tehran smile – but his paintings also probe Iran’s turbulent past</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/26/the-toast-of-tehran-irans-superstar-street-artist-in-pictures">The toast of Tehran: Iran’s superstar street artist – in pictures</a></li></ul><p>On a wall in east London, two giant crows loom over two young women who are swinging a rope. As a child jumps over the skipping rope, he approaches a hole in the ceiling above him. But if he finally jumps high enough to rise above the confines of the concrete ceiling, he will become prey for the waiting birds.</p><p>This is a mural by Mehdi Ghadyanloo, an Iranian artist who is about to have <a href="http://howardgriffingallery.com/exhibitions/perception/">his first exhibition in Britain</a>. It is an unexpected addition to the walls of Shoreditch; the neighbourhood famous for its street art rarely sees anything as subtle as this. As if to make the point, a car park nearby is plastered with ugly, third-rate graffiti. Ghadyanloo, by contrast, makes use of trompe l’oeil, the technique invented in the Renaissance of using perspective to create eye-fooling illusions. It is eerily arresting and poetic.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/26/mehdi-ghadyanloo-tehran-iran-street-art-banksy">Continue reading...</a>Street artArtIranArt and designCultureThu, 26 Feb 2015 07:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/26/mehdi-ghadyanloo-tehran-iran-street-art-banksyJonathan Jones2015-02-26T07:00:00ZThe man who made Monet: how impressionism was saved from obscurityhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/21/the-man-who-made-monet-how-impressionism-was-saved-from-obscurity
<p>How did the impressionist painters, once attacked by critics, become a global force? A major exhibition reveals their change in fortune was all down to one man – and he wasn’t even an artist</p><p>It is one of the ironies of impressionism, the quintessential French movement, that it had its beginning and its end not in Paris but in London. It is another irony that the key figure in the movement was not a painter but, that most maligned of species, a dealer. In 1871, having fled the Franco-Prussian war, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/monet">Claude Monet</a> was living in London. It was in January that year that the landscapist Charles-Fran&ccedil;ois Daubigny took him along to the inaptly named German Gallery on New Bond Street and introduced him to the proprietor, another French expat, named Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). Whether or not the gallerist believed Daubigny’s words of introduction – “This artist will surpass us all” – he liked Monet’s work well enough to buy numerous canvases and, a few days later, paintings by his fellow artist-refugee Camille Pissarro, too.</p><p>This meeting and the chain of introductions, friendships and innumerable business transactions it put in motion was to culminate 24 years later with an exhibition just down the road on Bond Street at the Grafton Galleries. The exhibition, sometimes known as The Apotheosis of Impressionism, contained 315 pictures and was, and remains, the largest show of impressionist works ever held. For Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley and their peers it was final confirmation that their struggle to win acceptance for their unacademic, light-infused paintings had been successful. For Durand-Ruel, it was validation of his steadfast support for this group of avant-garde painters which had several times put him on the point of financial ruin. As he noted: “My madness had been wisdom. To think that, had I passed away at 60, I would have died debt-ridden and bankrupt, surrounded by a wealth of underrated treasures.”</p><p>Durand-Ruel is the reason why the US has more impressionist works than anywhere else outside France</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/21/the-man-who-made-monet-how-impressionism-was-saved-from-obscurity">Continue reading...</a>Art and designCulturePaintingArtNational GalleryExhibitionsSat, 21 Feb 2015 08:00:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/21/the-man-who-made-monet-how-impressionism-was-saved-from-obscurityMichael Prodger2015-02-21T08:00:07ZTrading on borrowed time: shopping behind the iron curtainhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/17/trading-borrowed-time-shopping-behind-iron-curtain
<p>Three loaves of bread in a window, cans of hairspray, a trailer-load of carrots ... David Hlynsky’s photos show that the dying days of eastern bloc communism didn’t offer much for consumers except visions of Marxist austerity </p><p>Photographs of shops in eastern Europe a quarter of a century ago have the quirky appeal of some kind of communist pop art. For the 21st-century British viewer accustomed to endless consumer goods and relentless advertising, they are likely to look charming and innocent, even idyllic. Here is the high street purged and purified: shops that sell just one thing, and tell you what it is with minimalist simplicity. A picture of a ham in what otherwise looks like a domestic window announces a ham-seller. A Moscow toy shop has only a handful of simple, plastic toys in the window. Another shop appears to sell nothing but washing powder. Does the Czech window with a picture of a rabbit seen through a telescopic sight advertise rabbits, rifles or both?</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/17/trading-borrowed-time-shopping-behind-iron-curtain">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyCold warArt and designEconomicsCultureEuropeTue, 17 Feb 2015 18:00:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/17/trading-borrowed-time-shopping-behind-iron-curtainJonathan Jones2015-02-17T18:00:03ZTower of London poppies artist received death threatshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/15/tower-of-london-poppies-artist-death-threats-paul-cummins-first-world-war
<p>Paul Cummins, whose installation symbolised first world war deaths, says threats came from people angry that armed services charities were benefiting from the artwork</p><p>The artist whose Tower of London poppy installation drew millions of visitors has revealed he received death threats believed to be from people angry that armed services charities were benefiting from the work.</p><p><a href="http://www.paulcumminsceramics.com/">Paul Cummins</a>, who with designer Tom Piper created <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/28/blood-swept-lands-story-behind-tower-of-london-poppies-first-world-war-memorial">Blood Swept Lands And Seas Of Red</a> in the moat, said police were called in after the threats came by email, phone and letter.<br /></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/15/tower-of-london-poppies-artist-death-threats-paul-cummins-first-world-war">Continue reading...</a>ArtLondonUK newsFirst world warSun, 15 Feb 2015 12:24:21 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/15/tower-of-london-poppies-artist-death-threats-paul-cummins-first-world-warCaroline Davies2015-02-15T12:24:21ZWhere is Rocky II? The 10-year desert hunt for Ed Ruscha’s missing boulderhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/where-is-rocky-ii-ed-ruscha-mojave-desert-film-pierre-bismuth
At the end of the 1970s, artist Ed Ruscha left an artwork – a fake rock – somewhere in the vast Mojave desert. French artist Pierre Bismuth has spent a decade trying to find it – with the help of a private detective and a film crew<p>Although believed to be the largest free-standing boulder in the world, Giant Rock, which stands seven storeys tall in the mountainous southern Mojave desert, attracts few tourists, doesn’t appear in any guidebook and is an absolute nightmare to get to, requiring a hairy drive over three kilometres of winding dirt roads and hump-backed dunes that feels like a fairground ride from hell. If you didn’t have a reason to come, you probably wouldn’t bother. And if you don’t know how to get there, you’d likely never find it.</p><p>Considered sacred by Native Americans, presumed by locals to be an asteroid dropped from outer space, Giant Rock has never had any trouble attracting colourful characters – from the 1930s prospector who lived in rooms carved out beneath it, to the thousands of UFO believers who trekked here for annual conventions in the 1950s. All of which have lent this strange monolith a pop culture notoriety that continues to draw those in the know to this day.</p><p>I really started to think I was crazy. I'm glad I had a tape [of Ruscha] otherwise I would have thought I'd dreamt it</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/where-is-rocky-ii-ed-ruscha-mojave-desert-film-pierre-bismuth">Continue reading...</a>Ed RuschaDocumentaryArt and designFilmArtSculptureInstallationCultureWed, 11 Feb 2015 07:30:06 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/where-is-rocky-ii-ed-ruscha-mojave-desert-film-pierre-bismuthChris Campion2015-02-11T07:30:06ZSpraying the 70s: the pioneers of British graffitihttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/03/the-writing-on-the-wall-1970s-pioneers-of-british-graffiti
<p>From Malcolm McLaren and the Angry Brigade to Madness and Heathcote Williams by way of George Melly’s garage, a much-admired and now reissued photo book traces the story of Britain’s graffiti pioneers</p><p>In the mid-1970s, a teenager called Lee Thompson had a fleeting moment of notoriety in the press. Inspired by an article he’d seen in a Sunday paper about nascent graffiti culture in New York, he had begun spraypainting his nickname, Kix, around north London “out of boredom”, often in the company of three friends who called themselves Mr B, Cat and Columbo. They usually confined their activities to “dilapidated buildings, walls made of corrugated iron, smashed-up cars, and nothing on people’s property”. But, he admits, they didn’t always stick to their own rules. Once, they sprayed their names on a garage door. “And a few weeks later, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/jul/05/1">George Melly</a> wrote a piece in the Guardian or the Times saying, ‘I came out of my garage recently to find that people had sprayed graffiti on it. If I ever catch that Mr B, Kix and Columbo, I’m going to kick their arses.’</p><p>“So that was our claim to fame,” says Thompson today, his graffiti career long ended, his real claim to fame being his subsequent career as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/nov/25/how-we-made-one-step-beyond-madness-suggs-mike-barson">the frequently airbound saxophonist in Madness, formed by his pseudonymous friend Mr B, the band’s keyboard player, Mike Barson</a>. That would have been the end of the story, save for the fact that, not long afterwards, Thompson discovered that photographs of his nickname, daubed on a wrecked car and a wall in Kentish Town, had appeared in a book called <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1281254871/the-writing-on-the-wall">The Writing on the Wall</a>.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/18/no-regrets-from-policeman-on-mission-against-graffiti">No regrets for the police officer who wants to whitewash Banksy</a> </p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jun/21/my-secret-life-graffiti-artist">My secret life as a graffiti artist</a> </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/03/the-writing-on-the-wall-1970s-pioneers-of-british-graffiti">Continue reading...</a>Street artBooksArtProtestWorld newsCultureArt and designCitiesTue, 03 Feb 2015 17:43:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/03/the-writing-on-the-wall-1970s-pioneers-of-british-graffitiAlexis Petridis2015-02-03T17:43:29ZThe great Picasso sell-off: heir to 10,000 works ready to offload grandfather’s arthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/06/pablo-picasso-art-sell-off-marina
Marina Picasso’s plan to bypass traditional sales routes sends shockwaves through art world<p>The granddaughter of Pablo Picasso has said she plans to privately sell off “one by one, based on need” some of her collection of more than 10,000 works by the artist to help fund her charity work.</p><p>Marina Picasso’s plans to bypass traditional art market routes will send shivers down the spines of dealers and auction houses, though how much of an impact it will truly have on the art market depends on a key question. How much of her enormous collection – which includes 300 paintings along with thousands of drawings, etchings, and ceramics – does she intend to sell?</p><p>People say I should appreciate my inheritance, and I do, but it is an inheritance without love</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/06/pablo-picasso-art-sell-off-marina">Continue reading...</a>Pablo PicassoArt and designPaintingArtSpainEuropeWorld newsFri, 06 Feb 2015 16:31:35 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/06/pablo-picasso-art-sell-off-marinaMark Brown, arts correspondent2015-02-06T16:31:35Z‘Vote British, not Bolshie’: election posters that chart a changing Britainhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/election-posters-changing-britain-peoples-history-museum-manchester
<p>When women got the vote, how were they wooed? Why was Harold Wilson forced to puff a pipe? A Manchester show chronicles a century of election strategy and spin</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/feb/01/britain-votes-a-century-of-electioneering-in-pictures">Britain Votes! A century of electioneering – in pictures</a></li></ul><p>In a glass case on the first floor of the <a href="http://www.phm.org.uk/">People’s History Museum</a> in Manchester, there sits a pipe that once belonged to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/1995/may/25/obituaries">Harold Wilson</a>. The Labour leader and prime minister – who won four elections and was in Downing Street twice, between 1964 and 1970, and again, from 1974 to 1976 – did not smoke it by choice. He preferred cigars. But he and his aides understood that a pipe was a signifier for authenticity, roots and a mind that would not be rushed. Every time Wilson publicly puffed away, in other words, he was indulging in the modern political game we know as spin, long before the word was ever invented.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/election-posters-changing-britain-peoples-history-museum-manchester">Continue reading...</a>PostersElections pastCultureDesignArt and designPolitics pastPoliticsHistoryEducationMuseumsMuseumsExhibitionsGeneral election 2015ManchesterSun, 01 Feb 2015 18:00:08 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/01/election-posters-changing-britain-peoples-history-museum-manchesterJohn Harris2015-02-01T18:00:08ZThe United States of fear: Alec Soth photographs the death of community in Americahttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/26/alec-soth-songbook-united-states-of-fear-photography-death-american-community
<p>Men ballroom dancing on their own, lone figures dwarfed by the desert, and the last snow globe repairman ... with his sad pictures punctuated by heartwarming lyrics from golden oldies, Alec Soth shows how fear overtook hope in everyday America<br></p><p>In 2000, the US academic Robert D Putnam published <a href="http://bowlingalone.com/">Bowling Alone</a>: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. His thesis was that Americans had become increasingly insular, disconnected from family members, friends and neighbours and disinterested in joining clubs or social groups. Individualism had replaced community and though, for instance, more Americans were visiting bowling alleys than ever before, many were doing so alone.</p><p>Bowling Alone is one of two starting points for Alec Soth’s <a href="http://mackbooks.co.uk/books/1057-Songbook.html">Songbook</a>. The other is the canonical <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Songbook">Great American Songbook</a> – which is not a book at all but a yardstick for old-fashioned, well crafted lyrics and melodies composed by the likes of <a href="http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C67">Jerome Kern</a>, <a href="http://www.lorenzhart.org/">Lorenz Hart</a> and <a href="http://www.johnnymercerfoundation.org/">Johnny Mercer</a> and sung by the likes of <a href="http://www.sinatra.com/">Frank Sinatra</a>, <a href="https://tonybennett.com/">Tony Bennett</a> and <a href="http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/">Ella Fitzgerald</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/26/alec-soth-songbook-united-states-of-fear-photography-death-american-community">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureAmericasMusicMon, 26 Jan 2015 11:00:40 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/26/alec-soth-songbook-united-states-of-fear-photography-death-american-communitySean O'Hagan2015-01-26T11:00:40ZLeonora Carrington: wild at hearthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/28/leonara-carrington-wild-at-heart
<p>She ran off with Max Ernst, drank with the surrealists – and kept her tea under lock and key. Charlotte Higgins on the dazzling life and art of Leonora Carrington</p><p>Leonora Carrington was a debutante who ran away with the surrealists. Born in 1917, she was exactly the same age as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct/17/looking-back-the-mitford-sisterslooking-back-the-mitford-sisters">Jessica Mitford</a> – who eloped with Winston Churchill’s nephew to the Spanish civil war. Aside from their class (Carrington, a ravishing beauty with a cloud of curly dark hair, was presented at court in 1935), the two women had one rather striking thing in common: each was subject to an attempted “rescue” from Spain by protectors dispatched in submarines by concerned relatives. Churchill sent one to extract Mitford and his nephew; Carrington’s Irish nanny arrived by such a means of transport at the lunatic asylum in Santander where the artist was incarcerated in the early years of the second world war.</p><p>Carrington’s life calmed into stability only when she settled in Mexico City with her second husband Chiki Weisz, whom she married in 1943. She lived there from the late 1940s until her death in 2011. The consistent element was her art: wonderful paintings in which mingle the fantasies of Bosch, the elegance and spatial understanding of the quattrocento and her own personal mythology (drawing on Catholicism, Jewish mysticism and Celtic elements to create an utterly individual and at times impenetrable symbology). And yet, despite their fantastical elements, when you encounter them they seem natural and familiar: they might be the paintings of one’s own dreams. As Luis Bu&ntilde;uel once wrote of her work, it “liberates us from the miserable reality of our days”.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/28/leonara-carrington-wild-at-heart">Continue reading...</a>ArtPaintingTate LiverpoolFictionExhibitionsArt and designCultureWed, 28 Jan 2015 08:00:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/28/leonara-carrington-wild-at-heartCharlotte Higgins2015-01-28T08:00:01ZSpoon me: how cutlery design can blow your tastebuds awayhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/26/how-spoons-are-changing-gastronomy-cravings-science-museum
<p>Zinc for fizz, steel for saltiness, gold for mango sorbet … the right type of spoon can make a meal, finds Oliver Wainwright as he wraps his chops round the future of cutlery design</p><p>Seven metal teaspoons are set out on a table in front of me, neatly lined up on a white napkin, as if awaiting the arrival of Uri Geller, or a banquet consisting only of boiled eggs. Thankfully, neither of these scenarios turn out to be the case. I’m at the Science Museum, surrounded by experts in spoon science, here to enlighten me on the future of the most shapely member of the cutlery family, in advance of a forthcoming <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/cravings.aspx">exhibition on the science of taste</a>.</p><p>“My ambition is to make the best spoon in the world,” says Zoe Laughlin, director of <a href="http://www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/">the Institute of Making</a>, a research group at University College London, who made my seven-spoon place setting. “The first question is, what would it be made of?” As the gaggle of cutlery experts look on, it feels a little like I’m being inducted into a secret spoon society, or else I’ve wandered into an interview for <a href="http://www.private-eye.co.uk/eyeplayer.php?media=34">Private Eye’s satirical column, Me and My Spoon</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/26/how-spoons-are-changing-gastronomy-cravings-science-museum">Continue reading...</a>DesignArt and designFood & drinkCultureMon, 26 Jan 2015 07:59:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/26/how-spoons-are-changing-gastronomy-cravings-science-museumOliver Wainwright2015-01-26T07:59:03ZWhat they don’t want you to see: the hidden world of UK deportationhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/27/hidden-world-of-uk-deportation-asylum-seamless-transitions
<p>It is illegal to photograph the detention centres, closed courts, luxury lounges and private jets Britain uses to deport people. So artist James Bridle found another way to recreate these ‘invisible’ spaces</p><p>It’s a cold, wet night in December 2013. I’m sat in a car park on the far side of Stansted airport, and most of the day’s flights have already departed. This side of the runway is home to half a dozen private hangars. Harrods Aviation is here, providing engineering services and “fast, effortless and discreet arrivals and departures”. When I flew through Stansted in the summer as a tourist, one of the 747s in the Dubai royal family’s private fleet was parked on its apron. Also here is the Inflite Jet Centre, which presents itself online as something between a boutique hotel and a&nbsp;serviced office complex, offering “luxurious” furnishings, on-site chef and meeting rooms.</p><p>Not everyone who visits Inflite gets to enjoy such facilities, however. I’m here to witness some of the terminal’s other visitors: those who come only at night, and only when the regular customers have jetted off. At around 9pm, a series of coaches start to arrive, accompanied by police and private security vans. Most of them are from WH Tours in Crawley; one bears the exuberant legend of the holiday company “Just Go!” The coaches have come from detention centres all over England. They are carrying people who are being deported.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/27/hidden-world-of-uk-deportation-asylum-seamless-transitions">Continue reading...</a>ArtImmigration and asylumArt and designCultureTue, 27 Jan 2015 17:33:24 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/27/hidden-world-of-uk-deportation-asylum-seamless-transitionsJames Bridle2015-01-27T17:33:24ZMiracle Village: the sleepy Florida town for sex offendershttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/19/sex-offenders-florida-town-sofia-valiente-miracle-village-photography
<p>Sofia Valiente’s photobook tells the story of a community of over 100 ‘modern-day lepers’ and explores the question, is it ever possible to forgive?</p><p>“A walk through the village on a summer’s day is a great way to relax. Big puffy clouds dot the soft blue sky as far as the eye can see. The sunshine is warm. There’s usually a dog or two walking someone up or down the street. Sometimes there’s a jogger. It is an intimate community.”</p><p>So writes Joseph Steinberg of Miracle Village, where he is one of over 100 residents living quietly amid vast sugar cane fields in rural south Florida. The bungalows once exclusively housed migrant cane cutters from the West Indies, some of whom still live here. But Miracle Village’s current population predominantly consists of sex offenders. This is their sanctuary, a place to go when they finish their prison sentences and find they are not welcome where they once lived.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/19/sex-offenders-florida-town-sofia-valiente-miracle-village-photography">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designSex offenders registerSocietyCultureMon, 19 Jan 2015 13:05:38 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/19/sex-offenders-florida-town-sofia-valiente-miracle-village-photographySean O'Hagan2015-01-19T13:05:38ZAnarchy in the bus lane: how protesters quietly took over London’s streetshttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/18/anarchist-posters-london-bus-tube-police-strike-magazine
Your job is a stupid waste of time – and the police caused the 2011 riots. That’s what a spate of posters recently told London commuters. Who masterminded it? We pick up the trail at an anarchist magazine<p>“Phalanstery,” reads the buzzer outside the HQ of the anarchist magazine <a href="https://www.facebook.com/strikemagyo">Strike!</a> How I’m meant to work out that this is their office eludes me. I have to phone my contact to check – but that’s anarchism for you. At least I learn a new word. Phalanstery (or Phalanst&egrave;re) was the name of a building designed by 19th-century philosopher Charles Fourier to house a utopian community. That’s also anarchism for you.</p><p>Setting up a meeting with Strike! has been delicate. “We find ourselves in a bit of a bind,” one of them emails me when I first get in touch. “We don’t really want to focus attention on ourselves. We want the focus to be on collective action, not prominent individuals – on the issues of exploitation and alienation, not petty acts of vandalism.”</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/18/anarchist-posters-london-bus-tube-police-strike-magazine">Continue reading...</a>ArtPostersCultureArt and designIllustrationMagazinesProtestMetropolitan policePoliticsUK newsLondonSun, 18 Jan 2015 18:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/18/anarchist-posters-london-bus-tube-police-strike-magazineStephen Moss2015-01-18T18:00:09ZWhy Belgium's plagiarism verdict on Luc Tuymans is beyond parodyhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/luc-tuysmans-katrijn-van-giel-dedecker-legal-case
<p>One of Europe’s most influential painters has been found guilty of plagiarism. Even if you don’t buy that Luc Tuymans’ painting of a newspaper photo was parodic, it is still a part of his career-long interrogation of all images<br></p><p>On Tuesday, a <a href="http://artforum.com/news/id=49903" title="">Belgian court found the Antwerp-born painter Luc Tuymans guilty of plagiarism</a>, in his use of a photograph of the politician Jean-Marie Dedecker taken by <a href="http://katrijn.com/en" title="">Katrijn van Giel</a> for Belgian newspaper De Standaard.</p><p>Tuymans is one of Europe’s leading and most influential painters. In Belgium, he is an often outspoken public figure. He held a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2004/jun/22/1" title="">mid-career retrospective at Tate Modern in 2004</a>, and opens a <a href="http://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibition/luc-tuymans/" title="">new exhibition in London</a> next week.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/luc-tuysmans-katrijn-van-giel-dedecker-legal-case">Continue reading...</a>ArtPaintingPhotographyArt and designBelgiumCultureEuropeWed, 21 Jan 2015 17:23:57 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/21/luc-tuysmans-katrijn-van-giel-dedecker-legal-caseAdrian Searle2015-01-21T17:23:57ZThe big-eyed children: the extraordinary story of an epic art fraudhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/26/art-fraud-margaret-walter-keane-tim-burton-biopic
In the 1960s, Walter Keane was feted for his sentimental portraits that sold by the million. But in fact, his wife Margaret was the artist, working in virtual slavery to maintain his success. She tells her story, now the subject of a Tim Burton biopic<p>There’s a sweet, small suburban house in the vineyards of Napa, northern California. Inside, a family of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses bustles around, offering me a cheese plate. A Siamese cat weaves in and out of my legs. Everything is lovely. Sitting unobtrusively in the corner is 87-year-old Margaret Keane. “Would you like some macadamia nuts?” she asks. She hands me Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets too. “Jehovah looks after me every day,” she says. “I really feel it.” She is the last person you’d expect to be a participant in one of the great art frauds of the 20th century.</p><p>This story begins in Berlin in 1946. A young American named Walter Keane was in Europe to learn how to be a painter. And there he was, staring heartbroken at the big-eyed children fighting over scraps of food in the rubbish. As he would later write: “As if goaded by a kind of frantic despair, I sketched these dirty, ragged little victims of the war with their bruised, lacerated minds and bodies, their matted hair and runny noses. Here my life as a painter began in earnest.”</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/26/art-fraud-margaret-walter-keane-tim-burton-biopic">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArt and designArtTim BurtonFilmCultureUS crimeUS newsSun, 26 Oct 2014 17:59:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/26/art-fraud-margaret-walter-keane-tim-burton-biopicJon Ronson2014-10-26T17:59:04ZLondon's Sky Garden: the more you pay, the worse the viewhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/jan/06/londons-sky-garden-walkie-talkie-the-more-you-pay-the-worse-the-view
<p>The Sky Garden was meant to be a free public space with the most spectacular views of London. But it feels like you’re trapped in an airport, you can barely see the city because of a steel cage – and the more money you shell out, the worse it gets</p><p>I arrived at the foot of the cliff face of white fins that swoosh up into the sky, to find some handymen wrestling with sliding glass doors. They were hastily shooed away by a besuited host. “Can you come back in half an hour?” he asked them politely, not noticing me. “An architecture critic is on his way and we don’t want him to see the building looking broken.”</p><p>So began my visit to the long-awaited “Sky Garden” at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, the “public park” used to justify building such a vast office block on the edge of a conservation area, outside the City of London’s planned cluster of towers. Nicknamed the Walkie-Talkie, the building would swell above its neighbours in a bullying bulge – but all would be forgiven for the astonishing new public space at its summit.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/jan/06/londons-sky-garden-walkie-talkie-the-more-you-pay-the-worse-the-view">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureDesignCitiesLondonBusinessSocietySkyscrapersTue, 06 Jan 2015 16:24:59 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/jan/06/londons-sky-garden-walkie-talkie-the-more-you-pay-the-worse-the-viewOliver Wainwright2015-01-06T16:24:59ZA segregation that was never black and white: Gordon Parks’s photographs of 50s Alabamahttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/12/-sp-segregation-american-south-gordon-parks
<p>Shaft director Gordon Parks’s recently rediscovered images of African-American family life offer a unique portrait of Alabama on the brink of the civil-rights struggle</p><ul><li><a href="http://theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/nov/12/segregation-gordon-parks-rare-photographs-of-50s-alabama">Shotguns and sundaes: Gordon Parks’s rare photographs of everyday life in the segregated South</a></li><li><a href="https://witness.theguardian.com/assignment/5463410ce4b0c6f7ffe34ba3">Race relations in America, then and now: share your photo memories</a></li></ul><p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/picture/2013/nov/30/picture-from-the-past-gordon-parks">Gordon Parks</a>’s images of everyday American life under segregation were first published in 1956, one year after <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/31/rosa-parks-100-american-rebel-justice">Rosa Parks</a> refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama. By then, the bus boycott she had triggered was transforming the fight for civil rights into a national movement, and thrusting a young minister called Martin Luther King into the spotlight.</p><p>Parks’s shots challenge commonly held assumptions about segregation – chiefly, that it prevented any physical contact whatsoever between black and white Americans. The photographer, who also directed the 1971 blaxploitation detective movie <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlsufZj9Fg">Shaft</a>, followed three related families – the Thorntons, the Causeys and the Tanners – in their work, home and church lives near Mobile, Alabama.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/12/-sp-segregation-american-south-gordon-parks">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyRace issuesArt and designExhibitionsCultureWed, 12 Nov 2014 13:38:48 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/12/-sp-segregation-american-south-gordon-parksSteven W Thrasher2014-11-12T13:38:48ZCartier-Bresson's classic is back – but his Decisive Moment has passedhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/23/henri-cartier-bresson-the-decisive-moment-reissued-photography
<p>It’s the book that changed photography forever. But why republish The Decisive Moment after 62 years, when it cements such out-of-date ideas?</p><p>“There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment,” wrote the 17th-century cleric and memoirist <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/500197/Jean-Francois-Paul-de-Gondi-cardinal-de-Retz">Cardinal de Retz</a>, “and the masterpiece of good ruling is to know and seize this moment.”</p><p>Today, the idea of the decisive moment is synonymous with a certain kind of photography, exemplified by the great European master <a href="http://www.henricartierbresson.org/hcb/home_en.htm">Henri Cartier-Bresson</a>. He used the phrase as the title of his – and European photography’s – most famous book, published in America in 1952. (The simultaneous French edition was, intriguingly, called <a href="http://www.lense.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Large_H1000xW950.jpg">Images a la Sauvette – Images on the Run</a>.)</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/23/henri-cartier-bresson-the-decisive-moment-reissued-photography">Continue reading...</a>Henri Cartier-BressonPhotographyArt and designArt and designCultureTue, 23 Dec 2014 14:38:15 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/23/henri-cartier-bresson-the-decisive-moment-reissued-photographySean O'Hagan2014-12-23T14:38:15ZMons: it's the European capital of culture – but locals just want to go to Ikeahttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/13/mons-belgium-european-capitals-of-culture-ikea-nail-in-the-coffin
<p>Only one of the new buildings is ready, its centrepiece artwork had to be dismantled after bits fell off – and people are more excited about getting their first Ikea. Is the Belgian city the final nail in the coffin for European capitals of culture?</p><p>A cloud of planks swirls above the streets in the Belgian city of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/jan/06/mons-belgium-2015-culture-capital-art-museums-beer">Mons</a>, thrusting neon-painted splinters out in all directions. Like the jazzy nest of some mutant raver-crows, it is a curious arrival to the sleepy medieval lanes, a 90m-long torrent of orange sticks between the classical law courts and the baroque bell tower. It can only mean one thing: the <a href="http://www.mons2015.eu/en">European capital of culture 2015</a> has arrived.</p><p>That was the scene last week. Now all that remains of the €400,000 centrepiece of the city’s cultural jamboree is a few broken stumps jutting out of the pavement. The entire sculpture, designed by Belgian artist <a href="http://arnequinze.com/">Arne Quinze</a> and intended to stand here for the next five years, <a href="http://www.lalibre.be/regions/hainaut/coup-dur-pour-arne-quinze-the-passenger-va-etre-entierement-demonte-54b1124d3570b311405a36b9">has been dismantled after just five weeks</a>, following concerns over its stability after chunks of wood fell to the ground.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/13/mons-belgium-european-capitals-of-culture-ikea-nail-in-the-coffin">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureDesignArt and designCultureRegenerationSocietyBelgiumEuropeBelgiumCitiesEuropeTravelArtEuropean capital of cultureTue, 13 Jan 2015 13:00:40 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/13/mons-belgium-european-capitals-of-culture-ikea-nail-in-the-coffinOliver Wainwright in Mons2015-01-13T13:00:40ZSave the dinosaur: the rollercoaster story of East Berlin's forgotten theme parkhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/07/spreepark-east-berlin-forgotten-theme-park-rollercoaster-story
<p>In its heyday, 1.5m visitors flocked to Spreepark. But it went bankrupt in 2001 and plans to save it failed after 167kg of cocaine was found in the Flying Carpet. Now it’s a playground for raccoons, urban explorers – and edgy musicians</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/07/ghost-trains-and-forgotten-ferris-wheels-abandoned-theme-parks-in-pictures">Ghost trains and forgotten Ferris wheels: abandoned theme parks – in pictures</a></li></ul><p>The mammoth vanished overnight in May. The Viking Ship has run aground. The graffiti-covered T. rex has been lying on its side for years, its puny arms aloft. Swan-shaped gondolas lie scattered in the undergrowth, the occasional head poking above the weeds. The Old England village’s mock-Tudor buildings are charred from a fire in the summer, and the Wild West Village is merely a pile of rubble.</p><p>Walking around Berlin’s Spreepark, which has been abandoned since 2001, is like a stroll through a post-apocalyptic future. Time is frozen. Barely anything moves. Sometimes a family of raccoons who have found a home underneath the old Ghost Train tunnel rustle in the undergrowth. On the other side of the river outside the park, longboats filled with Polish coal dock silently by the power station.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/07/spreepark-east-berlin-forgotten-theme-park-rollercoaster-story">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureCultureBerlin WallTheme parksGermanyArt and designCitiesWorld newsWed, 07 Jan 2015 18:01:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/07/spreepark-east-berlin-forgotten-theme-park-rollercoaster-storyPhilip Oltermann in Berlin2015-01-07T18:01:29Z50 years of gentrification: will all our cities turn into 'deathly' Canberra?http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/dec/12/50-years-of-gentrification-will-all-our-cities-turn-into-deathly-canberra
<p>The drive to make cities more ‘liveable’ means parks, plazas and happy pedestrians. But the reality is ever more sterile, identikit cities where public space isn’t public at all</p><p>What makes a liveable city? Having lots of nice parks, you might think, a decent public transport system, good schools and hospitals, great architecture, exciting nightlife, easy access to the countryside. These are just some of the factors used by organisations who draw up annual lists of “the most liveable cities in the world”. And yet somehow, they end up with <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/is-canberra-really-the-worlds-best-city-more-like-capital-punishment/story-fni0fiyv-1227083038265">Canberra</a>.</p><p>This year, for the second year running, Australia’s political capital was named the best city in the world by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), a result that made northern hemisphere observers wonder if, down under, they were looking at the rankings upside down.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/dec/12/50-years-of-gentrification-will-all-our-cities-turn-into-deathly-canberra">Continue reading...</a>ArchitectureGentrificationRichard RogersCanberraSocietyGreen spacePlanning policyDesignCultureArt and designCitiesLondonDenmarkUrbanisationConstruction industryMembershipFri, 12 Dec 2014 14:56:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/dec/12/50-years-of-gentrification-will-all-our-cities-turn-into-deathly-canberraOliver Wainwright2014-12-12T14:56:03ZPoverty lines: where are the poor in art today?http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/dec/30/art-and-poverty-where-are-poor-in-art-today
<p>Caravaggio, Bruegel and Van Gogh all made studies of the poor in spite of rich patronage. Why aren’t more artists doing that now?</p><p>Art has a long history of entertaining the rich. From ancient artisans who made gold drinking cups for kings, to the artists of today who sell installations to plutocrats, art has been a luxury product, the servant of money. And yet it also has a social conscience. At this consumerist time of year, it is worth looking at some of the ways artists portray poverty.</p><p>Caravaggio never lets you forget the reality of Roman street life in the 17th century. His two pilgrims in The Madonna of Loreto look poverty stricken. The <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Michelangelo_Caravaggio_001.jpg">man’s feet are bare and dirty</a>. Shoeless feet appear time and again in Caravaggio’s art, and from him this marker of poverty was adopted by other baroque artists. Even that great flatterer of the rich, Anthony van Dyck, imitated Caravaggio by showing unshod feet of the poor in <a href="http://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/kunst/sir_anthonis_van_dyck/adoration_shepherds_xkh141369_hi.jpg">Adoration of the Shepherds</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/dec/30/art-and-poverty-where-are-poor-in-art-today">Continue reading...</a>ArtPaintingArt and designMichelangelo Merisi da CaravaggioVan GoghPovertySocial exclusionSocietyCultureTue, 30 Dec 2014 10:00:10 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/dec/30/art-and-poverty-where-are-poor-in-art-todayJonathan Jones2014-12-30T10:00:10ZChina’s wild west: photographing a vanishing way of lifehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/10/china-west-photograph-wild-pigeon-carolyn-drake
<p>For her book Wild Pigeon, Carolyn Drake spent seven years exploring a mysterious, isolated region 2,000 miles west of Beijing – then asked the persecuted Uyghur locals to graffiti over the shots she took</p><p>In 2007, <a href="http://carolyndrake.com/">Carolyn Drake</a> travelled to the province <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-16860974">Xinjiang Uyghur</a> in the remote west of China, over 2,000 miles from Beijing. “I was immediately confounded,” she writes in her intriguing new photobook, Wild Pigeon. “There were farms growing out of the desert, city streets that twisted and turned like mazes, and the people were loud, friendly and seemed to be living their lives publicly, on the streets and with open doors.”</p><p>Over the next seven years, Drake took several trips throughout the region, photographing landscapes and people and listening to the locals tell their often allegorical stories. The place – and its people – remained mysterious and elusive. “A blacksmith arranged a secret rendezvous for our meetings because he didn’t want his neighbours to know he spoke English … When I decided to wear a headscarf and eat halal, a family took me in because I was interested in Islam, then closed me out, deciding I wasn’t.”</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/10/china-west-photograph-wild-pigeon-carolyn-drake">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyArt and designCultureChinaAsia PacificWorld newsWed, 10 Dec 2014 17:22:12 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/10/china-west-photograph-wild-pigeon-carolyn-drakeSean O'Hagan2014-12-10T17:22:12ZAdelaide Blinc light show unites 'best digital artists in the world' - videohttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2015/mar/03/adelaide-festival-blinc-light-show-video
Adelaide festival sees the city's Elder Park host Blinc, an open-air exhibition of huge light installations, projected against water, canvas and buildings, including Parliament House. Two years in the making, Blinc was created by more than 20 international digital artists, who worked from intricately precise 3D maps of the outdoor space to create their works. The result, says curator Craig Morrison, is contemporary art, not 'just crowd pleasers with flashing lights'<br /><br />• <a href="http://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2015/visual_arts/blinc">Blinc Adelaide</a> runs until 15 March 2015 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2015/mar/03/adelaide-festival-blinc-light-show-video">Continue reading...</a>Art and designAdelaide festival 2015AdelaideCultureVideo artArtInstallationTue, 03 Mar 2015 02:35:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2015/mar/03/adelaide-festival-blinc-light-show-videoVideo produced by Fred McConnell, presented by Nancy Groves and Jane Howard2015-03-03T02:35:00ZOn the Beach: killer plastic art at the end of the earth – videohttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/australia-culture-blog/video/2015/mar/02/albany-plastics-ocean-festival-artist-tim-pearn-video
On an isolated stretch of Western Australian beach, artist Tim Pearn creates works from washed-up plastic waste collected over the course of a year on Albany's Goode beach. The resulting artworks, both beautiful and disturbing, are on show during the Great Southern festival, part of the 2015 Perth festival <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/australia-culture-blog/video/2015/mar/02/albany-plastics-ocean-festival-artist-tim-pearn-video">Continue reading...</a>Art and designEnvironmentCulturePerth festival 2015World newsPlastic bagsWestern AustraliaAustralia newsArtPhotographyMon, 02 Mar 2015 00:00:54 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/australia-culture-blog/video/2015/mar/02/albany-plastics-ocean-festival-artist-tim-pearn-videoVideo produced by Bill Code, presented by Monica Tan2015-03-02T00:00:54ZBanksy reveals his new graffiti in Gaza - video reporthttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/feb/27/banksy-reveals-his-new-graffiti-gaza-video-report
Graffiti artist, Banksy, has turned his attention to the streets and walls of Gaza. The street artist's graffiti stencils on concrete rubble include an image of a crying figure wearing a head scarf, a dark scene of children playing on a fairground ride and a white cat licking its paws <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/feb/27/banksy-reveals-his-new-graffiti-gaza-video-report">Continue reading...</a>BanksyGazaPalestinian territoriesStreet artMiddle East and North AfricaArt and designWorld newsCultureFri, 27 Feb 2015 10:36:30 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/feb/27/banksy-reveals-his-new-graffiti-gaza-video-reportGuardian Staff2015-02-27T10:36:30ZMarlene Dumas: polymorphously perverse in every way – videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/feb/02/marlene-dumas-image-as-burden-tate-modern-perverse-video-tour
From intimate portraits of dead bodies to backsides that follow you around the room and red-handed children you really don't want to mess with, Marlene Dumas will tackle any issue head on. Take an exclusive tour of the South African-born painter's new Tate Modern retrospective with the Guardian's Adrian Searle and the artist herself<br /><br />• <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/02/rapture-and-rejects-marlene-dumas-tate-modern">Rapture and rejects: the beautiful, flawed world of Marlene Dumas</a> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/feb/02/marlene-dumas-image-as-burden-tate-modern-perverse-video-tour">Continue reading...</a>Art and designPaintingTate ModernMon, 02 Feb 2015 18:44:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/feb/02/marlene-dumas-image-as-burden-tate-modern-perverse-video-tourAdrian Searle, Tom Silverstone2015-02-02T18:44:00ZGreek protesters hold candlelit vigil demanding return of Parthenon marbles – videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/jan/19/greece-protest-candlelit-vigil-return-parthenon-elgin-marbles-video
Hundreds of protesters hold a candlelit vigil in Athens on Sunday demanding that Britain returns the Parthenon marbles. 'We really need them back' says the mayor of Marathon, a suburb of Athens, holding up a candle. The marble statues from the facade of the Parthenon were taken to Britain more than 200 years ago and are currently housed at the British Museum in London <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/jan/19/greece-protest-candlelit-vigil-return-parthenon-elgin-marbles-video">Continue reading...</a>Parthenon marblesGreeceWorld newsCultureEuropeUK newsLondonMon, 19 Jan 2015 12:04:20 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2015/jan/19/greece-protest-candlelit-vigil-return-parthenon-elgin-marbles-videoGuardian Staff2015-01-19T12:04:20ZChinese artist Zhang Huan brings giant buddha to Sydney - videohttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2015/jan/09/giant-buddha-sydney-festival-zhang-huan-video
Chinese artist Zhang Huan, who made his name with high endurance performance inspired by monks, has created a giant buddha at Carriageworks for Sydney festival 2015. Made from 20 tonnes of incense ash and standing more than five metres tall, the two sculptures took three years to make and represent the collective soul and blessings of the Chinese people<br /><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/09/sydney-buddha-artist-zhang-huan-interview">• Zhang Huan on Chinese dreams and toilets – interview</a> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2015/jan/09/giant-buddha-sydney-festival-zhang-huan-video">Continue reading...</a>SculptureSydney festival 2015World newsBuddhismAustralia newsArt and designSydneyCultureFri, 09 Jan 2015 05:33:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2015/jan/09/giant-buddha-sydney-festival-zhang-huan-videoGuardian Staff2015-01-09T05:33:00ZBen Quilty: a portrait of the Australian artist in Paris – videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/25/ben-quilty-australian-artist-paris-slideshow
An intimate portrait of Ben Quilty and his young family as the Archibald-winning artist settles into a three-month residency in Paris. Ben's photographer cousin Andrew Quilty has captured their daily life exclusively for Guardian Australia, following them between an apartment on the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, the morning metro ride and Quilty's studio 'on top of the mountain' in Montmartre <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/25/ben-quilty-australian-artist-paris-slideshow">Continue reading...</a>PaintingArtArt and designWorld newsAustralia newsParisCultureThu, 25 Dec 2014 22:29:34 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/25/ben-quilty-australian-artist-paris-slideshowAndrew Quilty / Oculi :: aquilty/Andrew Quilty / OculiAustralian artist, Ben Quilty in Paris during a three month period in which time he had the use of a studio - granted through residency program - in Montematre, Paris. Photo: Andrew Quilty / Oculi Photograph: Andrew Quilty / Oculi :: aquilty/Andrew Quilty / OculiAndrew Quilty, Ben Quilty, Bill Code2014-12-25T22:29:34ZBen Eine: You can't stop graffitihttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/19/ben-eine-you-cant-stop-graffiti-street-art-central-st-martins-video
Street artist Ben Eine, whose work was chosen by David Cameron as a gift to Barack Obama, challenges the crackdown on Graffiti led by British Transport's Colin Saysell. 'If they stopped painting over [graffiti] eventually people would do nice paintings over it and it would actually be something to look at and yet they waste millions and millions of pounds painting over it continuously,' Eine said <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/19/ben-eine-you-cant-stop-graffiti-street-art-central-st-martins-video">Continue reading...</a>Ben EineStreet artUK newsFri, 19 Dec 2014 07:40:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/19/ben-eine-you-cant-stop-graffiti-street-art-central-st-martins-videoGuardian Staff2014-12-19T07:40:00ZBen Eine: I'm a graffiti artist; I'm not meant to meet David Cameron – videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/04/graffiti-artist-ben-eine-david-cameron-berlusconi-video
Graffiti artist Ben Eine reveals his surprise at being invited to Downing Street for tea and biscuits. The self-confessed former vandal admits he was amused to hear the prime minister jokingly promise not to share 'whores and jacuzzis' with Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi in Rome, and explains why he suspects Banksy is No 10's favourite spray-paint artist <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/04/graffiti-artist-ben-eine-david-cameron-berlusconi-video">Continue reading...</a>Ben EineArt and designStreet artDavid CameronPoliticsUK newsThu, 04 Dec 2014 17:10:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/dec/04/graffiti-artist-ben-eine-david-cameron-berlusconi-videoGuardian Staff2014-12-04T17:10:00ZTower of London poppies artist says transience is crucial to the installation - videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/nov/06/tower-london-poppies-artist-transience-remembrance-day-video
Ceramic artist Paul Cummins says he didn't realise how popular the idea would be after an estimated four million people visited his poppies installation at the Tower of London. There have been calls to extend the display, which is due to be taken down after Remembrance Day on 11 November, but Cummins says "the whole idea is for it to be transient" <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/nov/06/tower-london-poppies-artist-transience-remembrance-day-video">Continue reading...</a>SculptureArt and designCultureRemembrance DayLondonFirst world warGeorge OsborneUK newsThu, 06 Nov 2014 21:45:52 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/nov/06/tower-london-poppies-artist-transience-remembrance-day-videoGuardian Staff2014-11-06T21:45:52ZRomance Was Born: fashion duo show off new kids show - videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/australia-culture-blog/video/2014/oct/27/romance-was-born-for-kids-ngv-express-yourself
Fashion duo Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales – better known as Romance Was Born – show off the mummy tomb and animated billabong of Express Yourself, an interactive gallery show for children at the National Gallery of Victoria. Mixing art, design, fashion and childhood nostalgia, they talk about their inspirations with Alexandra Spring <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/australia-culture-blog/video/2014/oct/27/romance-was-born-for-kids-ngv-express-yourself">Continue reading...</a>Art and designDesignExhibitionsFashionCultureFestivalsMelbourneMon, 27 Oct 2014 00:53:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/australia-culture-blog/video/2014/oct/27/romance-was-born-for-kids-ngv-express-yourselfAlexandra Spring and Bill Code2014-10-27T00:53:00ZMelbourne art trams add colour to the city's streets – slideshowhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/21/art-trams-melbourne-festival-jeff-makin-slideshow-video
'Art should be out there,' says landscape artist Jeff Makin as he climbs aboard his Grampians tram, which is brightening up Melbourne's streets during its 2014 festival. Beginning life as the Transporting Art project in 1978, eight decorated trams will take on 21 routes around the city, with Makin the only artist to take part in both generations of the project <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/21/art-trams-melbourne-festival-jeff-makin-slideshow-video">Continue reading...</a>Street artMelbourne festival 2014ArtArt and designAustralia newsMelbourneVictoriaCultureMon, 20 Oct 2014 23:59:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/21/art-trams-melbourne-festival-jeff-makin-slideshow-videoNancy Groves, Bill Code and Paul Jeffers2014-10-20T23:59:00Z'Sex toy' sculpture raises eyebrows in Paris - videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/18/sex-toy-sculpture-raises-eyebrows-paris-video
A 60-ft tall green inflatable sculpture has caused a stir among Parisians for its resemblance to a sex toy. The Christmas Tree, designed by American artist Paul McCarthy, stands in the city's Place Vendome. McCarthy has reportedly been assaulted in the street in response to his design, which he says was inspired by a tree and a sex toy <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/18/sex-toy-sculpture-raises-eyebrows-paris-video">Continue reading...</a>SculpturePaul McCarthyParisFranceArtSexEuropeWorld newsSat, 18 Oct 2014 11:56:48 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/18/sex-toy-sculpture-raises-eyebrows-paris-videoGuardian Staff2014-10-18T11:56:48ZGo figure: Frieze art fair in numbers - videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/14/frieze-london-the-art-fair-in-numbers-video
Mega art fair Frieze London is about to swing its doors wide – but just how many kilos of coffee will the art world consume this week, and what's the biggest bargain ever bagged there? Our animation spills its secrets <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/14/frieze-london-the-art-fair-in-numbers-video">Continue reading...</a>Frieze art fairArtArt and designCultureAnimationTue, 14 Oct 2014 17:03:22 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/14/frieze-london-the-art-fair-in-numbers-videoGuardian Staff2014-10-14T17:03:22Z'It's a moment in thought, not a conclusion' – Turner prize 2014 nominee Duncan Campbell explains his workhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/10/turner-prize-2014-duncan-campbell
Duncan Campbell was nominated for a film, It For Others, which draws on a huge library of archive footage to look at a host of complex histories: the IRA, African art, and the language of advertising. He shows how his work came together <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/10/turner-prize-2014-duncan-campbell">Continue reading...</a>Turner prize 2014Turner prizeArt and designCultureFri, 10 Oct 2014 08:24:19 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/10/turner-prize-2014-duncan-campbellGuardian Staff2014-10-10T08:24:19Z'Chance encounters – that's when it's interesting': Turner prize 2014 nominee Ciara Phillips explains her workhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/09/turner-prize-2014-ciara-phillips
Ciara Phillips set up a workshop and invited artists to come and collaborate – the result is a series of bright screenprints, but also a sense of shared inspiration. She explains how the project came together <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/09/turner-prize-2014-ciara-phillips">Continue reading...</a>Turner prize 2014Turner prizeArt and designPaintingCultureThu, 09 Oct 2014 08:02:30 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/09/turner-prize-2014-ciara-phillipsGuardian Staff2014-10-09T08:02:30Z'The voice belongs but the body is gone': Turner prize 2014 nominee Tris Vonna-Michell explains his workhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/03/turner-prize-2014-tris-vonna-michell-video
Using the precarious analogue technology of slide projectors, paired with his own recorded voice, Tris Vonna-Michell creates poignantly fractured travelogues that have won him a Turner prize nomination. Here he explains his work in more detail <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/03/turner-prize-2014-tris-vonna-michell-video">Continue reading...</a>Turner prize 2014Turner prizeArt and designVideo artCultureFri, 03 Oct 2014 11:50:19 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/03/turner-prize-2014-tris-vonna-michell-videoGuardian Staff2014-10-03T11:50:19Z'It's about owning images – and disorientating them': Turner prize 2014 nominee James Richards explains his workhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/01/turner-prize-2014-james-richards-video
In the first of a series following 2014's Turner prize nominees at work in their studios, James Richards talks us through his 'abstract sculpture' which takes in film, sound and photography in a disquieting whole – from sources like submerged cameras and censored Japanese library books <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/01/turner-prize-2014-james-richards-video">Continue reading...</a>Turner prize 2014Turner prizeArt and designCultureWed, 01 Oct 2014 11:28:33 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/oct/01/turner-prize-2014-james-richards-videoGuardian Staff2014-10-01T11:28:33Z'A passionate, bloody arena': 30 years of the Turner prize, from Emin's bed to Grayson's dress – videohttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/sep/29/30-years-of-turner-prize-video
The Turner prize, launched 30 years ago, remains a focal point for British art and all its invention, vision and public outrage. Tate director Nicholas Serota and The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones consider its legacy, ahead of 2014's exhibition <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-2014">opening this week</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/sep/29/turner-prize-2014-shortlist-jonathan-jones">• The Turner prize show: voices, videos and erotic tickling sticks</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/sep/29/turner-prize-2014-tate-britain-nominees-in-pictures">• Censored bits and candy-coloured prints – the Turner prize 2014 in pictures</a> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/sep/29/30-years-of-turner-prize-video">Continue reading...</a>Turner prize 2014Turner prizeArt and designCultureTracey EminDamien HirstGrayson PerryRachel WhitereadArtSteve McQueenMon, 29 Sep 2014 14:09:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/sep/29/30-years-of-turner-prize-videoGuardian Staff2014-09-29T14:09:00ZTracey Emin: soundtrack of my lifehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/22/tracey-emin-soundtrack-of-my-life
The artist on meeting David Bowie, why Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep makes her sad and rediscovering the genius of the Beatles <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/22/tracey-emin-soundtrack-of-my-life">Continue reading...</a>Tracey EminPop and rockArt and designMusicCultureSun, 22 Feb 2015 07:00:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/22/tracey-emin-soundtrack-of-my-lifeInterview by Killian Fox2015-02-22T07:00:02ZThe slow death of the great American newsroomhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/philadelphia-inquirer-american-newspaper-will-steacy
<p>The newspaper industry in the US is in freefall as the shift to digital news accelerates. One photojournalist has spent five years lamenting the decline, and charting what has been lost</p><ul><li><a href="http://gu.com/p/46zk3/stw">The death of the American newsroom – in pictures</a></li></ul> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/philadelphia-inquirer-american-newspaper-will-steacy">Continue reading...</a>PhotographyNewspapersSocietyUS newsWorld newsNewspapers & magazinesMediaSat, 21 Mar 2015 19:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/philadelphia-inquirer-american-newspaper-will-steacyTim Adams2015-03-21T19:00:09ZCalling all art students: we want your alternative general election postershttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/guardianwitness-blog/2015/mar/13/calling-all-art-students-alternative-general-election-posters-competition-challenge
<p>Could your image capture the real Britain in the run-up to the 2015 general election? If you’re an art student in the UK, we want to see your best shot<br></p><p><strong><a href="https://witness.theguardian.com/assignment/54fed12de4b006eddbeef179#contribute">Share your posters here via GuardianWitness</a></strong><br></p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/guardianwitness-blog/2015/mar/13/calling-all-art-students-alternative-general-election-posters-competition-challenge">Continue reading...</a>PostersGeneral election 2015Art and designDesignIllustrationArtPaintingCultureUK newsPoliticsFri, 13 Mar 2015 15:55:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/guardianwitness-blog/2015/mar/13/calling-all-art-students-alternative-general-election-posters-competition-challengeMarta Bausells2015-03-13T15:55:01ZStuart Croft obituaryhttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/stuart-croft-obituary
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/stuart-croft-obituary">Continue reading...</a>ArtArt and designFilmCultureSun, 29 Mar 2015 16:00:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/29/stuart-croft-obituarySteven Eastwood2015-03-29T16:00:09Z